.i  '. -; 


EX-LIBRIS 

INTERNATIONAL  HOUSE" 


iBternational  House 


The  Profits  of  Religion 


THE  PROFITS 
OF  RELIGION 


An  Essay  in  Economic 
Interpretation 


By  UPTON  SINCLAIR 


Published  by  the  Author,   Pasadena,   California 


Copyright,  1918,  by  UPTON  SINCLAIR 

Copyright  in  Great  Britain  and 

Dependencies,  and  Continental  Countries 

All  Rights  Reserved 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


S 


OFFERTORY 


This  book  is  a  study  of  Super-naturalism 
from  a  new  point  of  view — as  a  Source  of  In 
come  and  a  Shield  to  Privilege.  I  have 
searched  the  libraries  through,  and  no  one  has 
done  it  before.  If  you  read  it,  you  will  see 
that  it  needed  to  be  done.  It  has  meant  twenty- 
five  years  of  thought  and  a  year  of  investiga 
tion.  It  contains  the  facts. 

I  publish  the  book  myself,  so  that  it  may  be 
available  at  the  lowest  possible  price.  I  am 
giving  my  time  and  energy,  in  return  for  one 
thing  which  you  may  give  me — the  joy  of 
speaking  a  true  word  and  getting  it  heard. 

Note  to  fifth  edition,  1926:  "The  Profits  of 
Religion"  was  first  published  early  in  1917. 
The  present  edition  represents  a  sale  of  over 
60,000  copies,  without  counting  a  dozen  trans 
lations.  In  this  edition  a  few  errors  have  been 
corrected,  but  otherwise  the  book  has  not  been 
changed.  The  reader  will  understand  that 
references  to  the  World  War  are  of  the  date 
'  1917,  prior  to  America's  entrance. 

This  book  is  the  first  of  a  series  of  volumes, 
an  economic  interpretation  of  culture,  which 
now  includes  "The  Brass  Check,"  "The  Goose- 
step,"  "The  Goslings,"  and  "Mammonart." 


M521446 


CONTENTS 


Introductory 


Bootstrap-lifting 11 

Religion 16 

Book  One:    The  Church  of  the  Conquerors 

The  Priestly  Lie 21 

The  Great  Fear 24 

Salve  Regina! 27 

Fresh  Meat 28 

Priestly  Empires 31 

Prayer-wheels 33 

The  Butcher-Gods 35 

The  Holy  Inquisition 38 

Hell-fire 41 

Book  Two:    The  Church  of  Good  Society 

The  Rain  Makers 47 

The  Babylonian  Fire-God 50 

The  Medicine-men 52 

The  Canonization  of  Incompetence 55 

Gibson's  Preservative , 58 

The  Elders. 62 

Church  History 66 

Land  and  Livings , 68 

Graft  in  Tail 7: 

Bishops  and  Beer , 73 

Anglicanism  and  Alcohol 76 

Dead  Cats , 80 

/'Suffer  Little  Children" 84 

The  Court-circclar 89 

Horn-blowing 92 

Trinity  Corporation 94 

Spiritual  Interpretation 97 

vii 


Book  Three:    The  Church  of  the  Servant  Girls 

Charity 105 

God's  Armor 109 

Thanksgivings 113 

The  Holy  Roman  Empire 115 

Temporal  Power 118 

Knights  of  Slavery 120 

Priests  and  Police 122 

The  Church  Militant 125 

The  Church  Triumphant 128 

God  in  the  Schools 131 

The  Menace 133 

King  Coal 137 

The  Unholy  Alliance 141 

Secret  Service 144 

Tax  Exemption „ 146 

Holy  History 148 

Das  Centrum 152 

Book  Four:    The  Church  of  the  Slavers 

The  Face  of  Caesar 161 

Deutscnland  ueber  Alles 163 

Der  Tag 164 

King  Cotton 167 

Witches  and  Women 170 

Moth  and  Rust 173 

To  Lyman  Abbott 176 

The  Octopus 180 

The  Industrial  Shelley 183 

The  Outlook  for  Graft, 187 

Clerical  Camouflage 191 

The  Jungle , 195 

Book  Five:    The  Church  of  the  Merchants 

The  Head  Merchant 201 

"Herr  Be-ble" 203 

Holy  Oil.   207 

Rhetorical  Black-hanging 212 

The  Great  American  Fraud 214 

Riches  in  Glory 217 

viii 


Captivating  Ideals 219 

Spook  Hunting 222 

Running  the  Rapids 225 

Birth  Control 227 

Sheep 230 

Book  Six:    The  Church  of  the  Quacks 

Tabula  Rasa 237 

The  Book  of  Mormon 239 

Holy  Rolling 242 

Bible  Prophecy 245 

Koreshanity 248 

Mazdaznan 250 

Black  Magic 253 

Mental  Malpractice 257 

Science  and  Wealth 261 

New  Nonsense ...... .264 

"Dollars  Want  Me!" 267 

Spiritual  Financiering 270 

The  Graft  of  Grace 273 

Book  Seven:    The  Church  of  the  Social  Revc<F:ution 

Christ  and  Caesar 281 

Locusts  and  Wild  Honey 284 

Mother  Earth 287 

The  Soap  Box 290 

The  Church  Machine « , 292 

The  Church  Redeemed 296 

The  Desire  of  Nations ,  . . 300 

The  Knowable 302 

"Nature's  Insurgent  Son". . , 305 

The  New  Morally 308 

Envoi.. 311 


INTRODUCTORY 


Bootstrap-lifting 

Bootstrap-lifting?  says  the  reader. 

It  is  a  vision  I  have  seen :  upon  a  vast  plain,  men  and 
women  are  gathered  in  dense  throngs,  crouched  in  un 
comfortable  and  distressing  positions,  their  fingers 
hooked  in  the  straps  of  their  boots.  They  are  engaged  in 
lifting  themselves ;  tugging  and  straining  until  they  grow 
red  in  the  face,  exhausted.  The  perspiration  streams 
from  their  foreheads,  they  show  every  symptom  of  dis 
tress  ;  the  eyes  of  all  are  fixed,  not  upon  each  other,  nor 
upon  their  boot-straps,  but  upon  the  sky  above.  There 
is  a  look  of  rapture  upon  their  faces,  and  now  and  then, 
amid  grunts  and  groans,  they  cry  out  with  excitement 
and  triumph. 

I  approach  one  and  say  to  him,  "Friend,  what  is  this 
you  are  doing?" 

He  answers,  without  pausing  to  glance  at  me,  "I  am 
performing  spiritual  exercises.  See  how  I  rise?" 

"But,"  I  say,  "you  are  not  rising  at  all !" 

Whereat  he  becomes  instantly  angry.  "You  are  one 
of  the  scoffers !" 

"But,  friend,"  I  protest,  "don't  you  feel  the  earth 
under  your  feet?" 

"You  are  a  materialist !" 

"But,  friend,  I  can  see—" 

"You  are  without  spiritual  vision !" 

11 


12  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

And  so  I  move  on  among  the  sweating  and  groaning 
hordes.  Being  of  a  sympathetic  turn  of  mind,  I  cannot 
help  being  distressed  by  the  prevalence  of  this  singular 
practice  among  so  large  a  portion  of  the  human  race. 
How  is  it  possible  that  none  of  them  should  suspect  the 
futility  of  their  procedure?  Or  can  it  really  be  that  I 
am  uncomprehending?  That  in  some  way  they  are  ac 
tually  getting  off  the  ground,  or  about  to  get  off  the 
ground  ? 

Then  I  observe  a  new  phenomenon:  a  man  gliding 
here  and  there  among  the  bootstrap-lifters,  approaching 
from  the  rear  and  slipping  his  hands  into  their  pockets, 
The  position  of  the  spiritual  exercisers  greatly  facilitates 
his  work;  their  eyes  being  cast  up  to  heaven,  they  do 
rot  see  him,  their  thoughts  being  occupied,  they  do  not 
heed  him;  he  goes  through  their  pockets  at  leisure,  and 
transfers  the  contents  to  a  bag  he  carries,  and  then  moves 
on  to  the  next  victim.  I  watch  him  for  a  while,  and 
finally  approach  and  ask,  "What  are  you  doing,  sir?" 

He  answers,  "I  am  picking  pockets." 

"Oh,"  I  say,  puzzled  by  his  matter-of-course  tone, 
"But —  I  beg  pardon — are  you  a  thief?" 

"Oh,  no,"  he  answers,  smilingly,  "I  am  the  agent  of 
the  Wholesale  Pickpockets'  Association.  This  is  Pros 
perity." 

"I  see,"  I  reply.    "And  these  people  let  you—" 

"It  is  the  law,"  he  says.    "It  is  also  the  gospel." 

I  turn,  following  his  glance,  and  observe  another  per 
son  approaching — a  stately  figure,  clad  in  scarlet  and 
purple  robes,  moving  with  slow  dignity.  He  gazes 
about  at  the  sweating  and  grunting  hordes;  now  and 
then  he  stops  and  lifts  his  hands  in  a  gesture  of  benedic- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  13 

tion,  and  proclaims  in  rolling  tones,  "Blessed  are  the 
Bootstrap-lifters,  for  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  Heaven." 
He  moves  on,  and  after  a  bit  stops  and  announces  again, 
"Man  doth  not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by  every  word 
that  cometh  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  prophets  and  priests 
of  Bootstrap-lifting." 

Watching  a  while  longer,  I  see  this  majestic  one 
approach  the  agent  of  the  Wholesale  Pickpockets'  Asso 
ciation.  The  agent  greets  him  as  a  friend,  and  proceeds 
to  transfer  to  the  pockets  of  his  capacious  robes  a  gen 
erous  share  of  the  loot  which  he  has  collected.  The  ma 
jestic  one  does  not  cringe,  nor  does  he  make  any  effort 
to  hide  what  is  going  on.  On  the  contrary  he  cries 
aloud,  "It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive !"  And 
again  he  cries,  "The  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire !"  And 
a  third  time  he  cries,  yet  more  sternly,  "Render  unto 
Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's!"  And  the  Boot 
strap-lifters  pause  long  enough  to  answer:  "Lord  have 
mercy  upon  us,  and  incline  our  hearts  to  keep  this  law !" 
Then  they  renew  their  straining  and  tugging. 

I  step  up,  and  in  timid  tones  begin,  "Reverend  sir, 
will  you  tell  me  by  what  right  you  take  this  wealth  ?" 

Instantly  a  frown  comes  upon  his  face,  and  he  cries 
in  a  voice  of  thunder,  "Blasphemer !"  And  all  the  Boot 
strap-lifters  desist  from  their  lifting,  and  menace  me  with 
furious  looks.  There  is  a  general  call  for  a  policeman  of 
the  Wholesale  Pickpockets'  Association;  and  so  I  fall 
silent,  and  slink  away  in  the  throng,  and  thereafter  keep 
my  thoughts  to  myself. 

Over  the  vast  plain  I  wander,  observing  a  thousand 
strange  and  incredible  and  terrifying  manifestations  of 
the  Bootstrap-lifting  impulse.  There  is,  I  discover,  a 


14  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

regular  propaganda  on  foot;  a  long  time  ago — no  man 
can  recall  how  far  back — the  Wholesale  Pickpockets 
made  the  discovery  of  the  ease  with  which  a  man's 
pockets  could  be  rifled  while  he  was  preoccupied  with 
spiritual  exercises,  and  they  began  offering  prizes  for 
the  best  essays  in  support  of  the  practice.  Now  their 
propaganda  is  everywhere  triumphant,  and  year  by  year 
we  see  an  increase  in  the  rewards  and  emoluments  of 
the  prophets  and  priests  of  the  cult.  The  ground  is  cov 
ered  with  stately  temples  of  various  designs,  all  of  which 
I  am  told  are  consecrated  to  Bootstrap-lifting.  I  come 
•f  ->  where  a  group  of  people  are  occupied  in  laying  the 
corner-stone  of  a  new  white  marble  structure ;  I  inquire 
and  am  informed  it  is  the  First  Church  of  Bootstrap- 
lifters,  Scientist.  As  I  ste  id  watching,  a  card  is  handed 
to  me,  informing  me  that  a  lady  will  do  my  Bootstrap- 
lifting  at  five  dollars  per  lift. 

I  go  on  to  another  building,  which  I  am  told  is  a 
library  containing  volumes  in  defense  of  the  Bootstrap- 
lifters,  published  under  the  auspices  of  the  Wholesale 
Pickpockets.  I  enter,  and  find  endless  vistas  of  shelves, 
also  several  thousand  current  magazines  and  papers.  I 
consult  these — for  my  legs  have  given  out  in  the  effort  to 
visit  and  inspect  all  phases  of  the  Bootstrap-lifting  prac 
tice.  I  discover  that  hardly  a  week  passes  that  some  one 
does  not  start  a  new  cult,  or  revive  an  old  one ;  if  I  had  a 
hundred  life-times  I  could  not  know  all  the  creeds  and 
ceremonies,  the  services  and  rituals,  the  litanies  and 
liturgies,  the  hymns,  anthems  and  offertories  of  Boot 
strap-lifting.  There  are  the  Holy  Roman  Bootstrap-lift 
ers,  whose  priests  are  fed  by  Transubstantiation ;  the 
established  Anglican  Bootstrap-lifters,  whose  priests  live 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  15 

by  "livings" ;  the  Baptist  Bootstrap-lifters,  whose  preach 
ers  practice  total  immersion  in  Standard  Oil.  There  are 
Yogi  Bootstrap-lifters  with  flowing  robes  of  yellow  silk ; 
Theosophist  Bootstrap-lifters  with  green  and  purple 
auras;  Mormon  Bootstrap-lifters,  Mazdaznan  Bootstrap- 
lifters,  Spiritualist  and  Spirit-Fruit,  Millerite  and  Dow- 
ieite,  Holy  Roller  and  Holy  Jumper,  Come-to-glory  ne 
gro,  Billy  Sunday  base-ball  and  Salvation  Army  bass- 
drum  Bootstrap-lifters.  There  are  the  thousand  varie 
ties  of  "New  Thought"  Bootstrap-lifters ;  the  mystic  and 
transcendentalist,  Swedenborgian  and  Jacob  Boehme 
Bootstrap-lifters;  the  Elbert  Hubbard  high-art  Boot 
strap-lifters  with  half  a  million  magazinelets  at  two  bits 
apiece;  the  "uplift"  and  "optimist,"  the  Ralph  Waldo 
Trine  and  Orison  Swett  Harden  Bootstrap-lifters  with 
a  hundred  thousand  volumes  at  one  dollar  per  volume. 
There  are  the  Platoni?1:  and  Hegelian  and  Kantian  pro 
fessors  of  collegiate  metaphysical  Bootstrap-lifting  at 
several  thousand  dollars  per  year  each.  There  are  the 
Nietzschean  Bootstrap-lifters,  who  lift  themselves  to  the 
Superman,  and  the  art-for-art's-sake,  neo-Pagan  Boot 
strap-lifters,  who  lift  themselves  down  to  the  Ape. 

Excepting  possibly  the  last-mentioned  group,  the 
priests  of  all  these  cults,  the  singers,  shouters,  prayers 
and  exhorters  of  Bootstrap-lifting  have  as  their  distin 
guishing  characteristic  that  they  do  very  little  lifting  at 
their  own  bootstraps,  and  less  at  any  other  man's.  Now 
and  then  you  may  see  one  bend  and  give  a  delicate  tug, 
of  a  purely  symbolical  character:  as  when  the  Supreme 
Pontiff  of  the  Roman  Bootstrap-lifters  comes  once  a 
year  to  wash  the  feet  of  the  poor;  or  when  the  Sunday- 
school  Superintendent  of  the  Baptist  Bootstrap-lifters 


16  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

shakes  the  hand  of  one  of  his  Colorado  mine-slaves.  But 
for  the  most  part  the  priests  and  preachers  of  Bootstrap- 
lifting  walk  haughtily  erect,  many  of  them  being  so 
swollen  with  prosperity  that  they  could  not  reach  their 
bootstraps  if  they  wanted  to.  Their  role  in  life  is  to 
exhort  other  men  to  more  vigorous  efforts  at  self-eleva 
tion,  that  the  agents  of  the  Wholesale  Pickpockets'  Asso 
ciation  may  ply  their  immemorial  role  with  less  chance  of 
interference. 

Religion 

The  reader,  offended  by  this  raillery,  asks  if  I  mean 
to  impugn  the  sincerity  of  all  who  preach  the  supremacy 
of  the  soul.  No ;  I  admit  the  honesty  of  the  heroes  and 
madmen  of  history.  All  I  ask  of  the  preacher  is  that  he 
shall  make  an  effort  to  practice  his  doctrine.  Let  him 
be  tormented  like  Don  Quixote;  let  him  go  mad  like 
Nietzsche;  let  him  stand  upon  a  pillar  and  be  devoured 
by  worms  like  Simeon  Stylites — on  these  terms  I  grant 
to  any  dreamer  the  right  to  hold  himself  above  economic 
science. 

)  Man  is  an  evasive  beast,  given  to  cultivating  strange 
notions  about  himself.  He  is  humiliated  by  his  simian 
ancestry,  and  tries  to  deny  his  animal  nature,  to  persuade 
himself  that  he  is  not  limited  by  its  weaknesses  nor  con 
cerned  in  its  fate.  And  this  impulse  may  be  harmless, 
when  it  is  genuine.  But  what  are  we  to  say  when  we 
see  the  formulas  of  heroic  self-deception  made  use  of  by 
unheroic  self-indulgence?  What  are  we  to  say  when  we 
see  asceticism  preached  to  the  poor  by  fat  and  comfort 
able  retainers  of  the  rich  ?  What  are  we  to  say  when  we 
see  idealism  become  hypocrisy,  and  the  moral  and  spir 
itual  heritage  of  mankind  twisted  to  the  knavish  pur- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  17 

poses  of  class-cruelty  and  greed?    What  I  say  is — Boot 
strap-lifting  ! 

It  is  the  fate  of  many  abstract  words  to  be  used  in 
two  senses,  one  good  and  the  other  bad.  Morality  means 
the  will  to  righteousness,  or  it  means  Anthony  Corn- 
stock;  democracy  means  the  rule  of  the  people,  or  it 
means  Tammany  Hall.  And  so  it  is  with  the  word  "Re 
ligion".  VIn  its  true  sense  Religion  is  the  most  funda 
mental  of  the  soul's  impulses,  the  impassioned  love  of 
life,  the  feeling  of  its  preciousness,  the  desire  to  foster 
and  further  it.  In  that  sense  every  thinking  man  must 
be  religious ;  in  that  sense  Religion  is  a  perpetually  self- 
renewing  force,  the  very  nature  of  our  being.  In  that 
sense  I  have  no  thought  of  assailing  it,  I  would  make 
clear  that  I  hold  it  beyond  assailment. 

But  we  are  denied  the  pleasure  of  using  the  word  in 
that  honest  sense,  because  of  another  which  has  beer» 
given  to  it. /To  the  ordinary  man  "Religion"  means,  not, 
the  soul's  longing  for  growth,  the  "hunger  and  thirs1: 
after  righteousness",  but  certain  forms  in  which  thij 
hunger  has  manifested  itself  in  history,  and  prevails  to 
day  throughout  the  world;  that  is  to  say,  institutions 
having  fixed  dogmas  and  "revelations",  creeds  and  rit 
uals,  with  an  administering  caste  claiming  supernatural 
sanction.  By  such  institutions  the  moral  strivings  of 
the  race,  the  affections  of  childhood  and  the  aspirations 
of  youth  are  made  the  prerogatives  and  stock  in  trade 
of  ecclesiastical  hierarchies.  It  is  the  thesis  of  this  book 
.(that  "Religion"  in  this  sense  is  a  source  of  income  to 
]  parasites,  and  the  natural  ally  of  every  form  of  oppres 
sion  and  exploitation. 

If  by  my  jesting  at  "Bootstrap-lifting"  I  have  wound- 


18  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

ed  some  dear  prejudice  of  the  reader,  let  me  endeavor 
to  speak  in  a  more  persuasive  voice.  \  I  am  a  man  who 
has  suffered,  and  has  seen  the  suffering  of  others ;  I  have 
devoted  my  life  to  analyzing  the  causes  of  the  suffering, 
to  find  out  if  it  be  necessary  and  fore-ordained,  or  if  by 
any  chance  there  be  a  way  of  escape  for  future  genera 
tions.  I  have  found  that  the  latter  is  the  case;  the  suf 
fering  is  needless,  it  can  with  ease  and  certainty  be  ban 
ished  from  the  earth.  I  know  this  with  the  knowledge 
of  science — in  the  same  way  that  the  navigator  of  a  ship 
knows  his  latitude  and  longitude,  and  the  point  of  the 
compass  to  which  he  must  steer  in  order  to  reach  the  port, 
Come,  reader,  let  us  put  aside  prejudice,  and  the 
terrors  of  the  cults  of  the  unknown.  The  power  which 
made  us  has  given  us  a  mind,  and  the  impulse  to  its  use ; 
let  us  see  what  can  be  done  with  it  to  rid  the  earth  of  its 
ancient  evils.  And  do  not  be  troubled  if  at  the  outset 
this  book  seems  to  be  entirely  "destructive".  I  assure 
you  that  I  am  no  crude  materialist,  I  am  not  so  shallow 
as  to  imagine  that  our  race  will  be  satisfied  with  a  bar 
ren  rationalism.  I  know  that  the  old  symbols  came  out 
of  the  heart  of  man  because  they  corresponded  to  certain 
needs  of  the  heart  of  man.  I  know  that  new  symbols 
will  be  found,  corresponding  more  exactly  to  the  needs 
of  our  time.  If  here  I  set  to  work  to  tear  down  an  old 
and  ramshackle  building,  it  is  not  from  blind  destruct- 
fulness,  but  as  an  architect  who  means  to  put  a  new  and 
sounder  structure  in  its  place.  Before  we  part  company. 
I  shall  submit  the  blue  print  of  that  new  home  of  the 
spirit. 


BOOK  ONE 

The  Church  of  the  Conquerors 

2  saw  the  Conquerors  riding  by 

With  trampling  feet  of  horse  and  men: 
Empire  on  empire  like  the  tide 

Flooded  the  world  and  ebbed  again ; 

A  thousand  banners  caught  the  sun, 
And  cities  smoked  along  the  plain, 

And  laden  down  with  silk  and  gold 

And  heaped  up  pillage  groaned  the  wain. 

Kemp. 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  21 


The  Priestly  Lie 

When  the  first  savage  saw  his  hut  destroyed  by  a  bolt 
of  lightning,  he  fell  down  upon  his  face  in  terror.  He 
had  no  conception  of  natural  forces,  of  laws  of  electric 
ity  ;  he  saw  this  event  as  the  act  of  an  individual  intelli 
gence.  To-day  we  read  about  fairies  and  demons, 
dryads  and  fauns  and  satyrs,  Wotan  and  Thor  and  Vul 
can,  Freie  and  Flora  and  Ceres,  and  we  think  of  all  these 
as  pretty  fancies,  play-products  of  the  mind ;  losing  sight 
of  the  fact  that  they  were  originally  meant  with  entire 
seriousness — that  not  merely  did  ancient  man  believe  in 
them,  but  was  forced  to  believe  in  them,  because  the 
mind  must  have  an  explanation  of  things  that  happen, 
and  an  individual  iritelligence~was  the  only  explanation 
available.  The  story  of  the  hero  who  slays  the  devouring 
dragon  was  not  merely  a  symbol  of  day  and  night,  of 
summer  and  winter;  it  was  a  literal  explanation  of  the 
phenomena,  it  was  the  science  of  early  times. 

Men  imagined  supernatural  powers  such  as  they 
could  comprehend.  If  the  lightning  god  destroyed  a  hut, 
obviously  it  must  be  because  the  owner  of  the  hut  had 
given  offense ;  so  the  owner  must  placate  the  god,  using 
those  means  which  would  be  effective  in  the  quarrels 
of  men — presents  of  roast  meats  and  honey  and  fresh 
fruits,  of  wine  and  gold  and  jewels  and  women,  accom 
panied  by  friendly  words  and  gestures  of  submission. 
And  when  in  spite  of  all  things  the  natural  evil  did  not 
cease,  when  the  people  continued  to  die  of  pestilence, 
then  came  the  opportunity  for  hysterical  or  ambitious 


22  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

persons  to  discover  new  ways  of  penetrating  the  mind 
of  the  god.  There  would  be  dreamers  of  dreams  and 
seers  of  visions  and  hearers  of  voices;  readers  of  the 
entrails  of  beasts  and  interpreters  of  the  flight  of  birds ; 
there  would  be  burning  bushes  and  stone  tablets  on 
mountain-tops,  and  inspired  words  dictated  to  aged  dis 
ciples  on  lonely  islands.  There  would  arise  special  castes 
of  men  and  women,  learned  in  these  sacred  matters ;  and 
these  priestly  castes  would  naturally  emphasize  the  im 
portance  of  their  calling,  would  hold  themselves  aloof 
from  the  common  herd,  endowed  with  special  powers  and 
entitled  to  special  privileges.  They  would  interpret  the 
oracles  in  ways  favorable  to  themselves  and  their  order ; 
they  would  proclaim  themselves  friends  and  confidants 
of  the  god,  walking  with  him  in  the  night-time,  receiving 
his  messengers  and  angels,  acting  as  his  deputies  in  for 
giving  offenses,  in  dealing  punishments  and  in  receiving 
gifts.  They  would  become  makers  of  laws  and  moral 
codes.  They  would  wear  special  costumes  to  distinguish 
them,  they  would  go  through  elaborate  ceremonies  to 
impress  their  followers,  employing  all  sensuous  effects, 
architecture  and  sculpture  and  painting,  music  and 
poetry  and  dancing,  candles  and  incense  and  bells  and 
gongs 

And  storied  wmaows  richly  dight, 

Casting  a  dim  religious  light. 

There  let  the  pealing  organ  blow, 

To  the  full-voiced  choir  below, 

In  service  high  and  anthem  clear, 

As  may  with  sweetness  through  mine  ear 

Dissolve   me   into    ecstacies, 

And  bring  all  heaven  before  mine  eyes. 

So  builds  itself  up,  in  a  thousand  complex  and  com- 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  23 

plicated  forms,  the  Priestly  Lie.  There  are  a  score  of 
great  religions  in  the  world,  each  with  scores  or  hun 
dreds  of  sects,  each  with  its  priestly  orders,  its  compli 
cated  creed  and  ritual,  its  heavens  and  hells.  Each  has 
its  thousands  or  millions  or  hundreds  of  millions  of  "true 
believers" ;  each  damns  all  the  others,  with  more  or  less 
heartiness — and  each  is  a  mighty  fortress  of  Graft. 

There  will  be  few  readers  of  this  book  who  have  not 
been  brought  up  under  the  spell  of  some  one  of  these 
systems  of  Supernaturalism ;  who  have  not  been  taught 
to  speak  with  respect  of  some  particular  priestly  order, 
to  thrill  with  awe  at  some  particular  sacred  rite,  to  seek 
respite  from  earthly  woes  in  some  particular  ceremonial 
spell.  These  things  are  woven  into  our  very  fibre  in 
rhijdjiood;  they  are  sanctified  by  memories  of  joys  and 
griefs,  they  are  confused  with  spiritual  struggles,  they 
become  part  of  all  that  is  most  vital  in  our  lives.  The 
reader  who  wishes  to  emancipate  himself  from  their 
thrall  will  do  well  to  begin  with  a  study  of  the  beliefs 
and  practices  of  other  sects  than  his  own — a  field  Where 
he  is  free  to  observe  and  examine  without  fear  of  sacri 
lege.  Let  him  look  into  Madame  Blavatsky's  "Secret 
Doctrine",  or  her  "Isis  Unveiled" — encyclopedias  of  the 
fantastic  inventions  which  terror  and  longing  have  wrung 
out  of  the  tortured  soul  of  man.  Here  are  mysteries  and 
solemnities,  charms  and  spells,  illuminations  and  trans 
migrations,  angels  and  demons,  guides,  controls  and 
masters — all  of  which  it  is  permissible  to  refuse  to  sup 
port  with  gifts.  Let  the  reader  then  go  to  James  Free 
man  Clarke's  "Ten  Great  Religions",  and  realize  how 
many  billions  of  humans  have  lived  and  died  in  the  sol 
emn  certainty  that  their  welfare  on  earth  and  in  heaven 


24  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

depended  upon  their  accepting  certain  ideas  and  prac 
ticing  certain  rites,  all  mutually  exclusive  and  incompat 
ible,  each  damning  the  others  and  the  followers  of  the 
others.  So  gradually  the  realization  will  come  to  him 
that  the  test  of  a  doctrine  about  life  and  its  welfare  must 
be  something  else  than  the  fact  that  one  was  born  to  it. 

^  The  Great  Fear 

It  was  not  the  fault  of  primitive  man  that  he  was 
ignorant,  nor  that  his  ignorance  made  him  a  prey  to  dread. 
The  traces  of  his  mental  suffering  will  inspire  in  us  only 
pity  and  sympathy ;  for  Nature  is  a  grim  school-mistress, 
and  not  all  her  lessons  have  yet  been  learned.  We  have 
a  right  to  scorn  and  anger  only  when  we  see  this  dread 
being  diverted  from  its  true  function,  a  stimulus  to  a 
search  for  knowledge,  and  made  into  a  means  of  clamp 
ing  down  ignorance  upon  the  mind  of  the  race.  That 
this  has  been  the  deliberate  policy  of  institutionalized 
Religion  no  candid  student  can  deny. 

The  first  thing  brought  forth  by  the  study  of  any 
religion,  ancient  or  modern,  is  that  it  is  based  upon  Fear, 
born  of  it,  fed  by  it — and  that  it  cultivates  the  source 
from  which  its  nourishment  is  derived.  ""The  fear  of 
divine  anger",  says  Prof.  Jastrow,  "runs  as  an  undercur 
rent  through  the  entire  religious  literature  of  Babylonia 
and  Assyria."  In  the  words  of  Tabi-utul-Enlil,  King  of 
ancient  Nippur: 

Who  is  there  that  can  grasp  the  will  of  the  gods  in  heaven? 

The  plan  of  a  god  is  full  of  mystery — who  can  understand  it? 

He  who  is  still  alive  at  evening  is  dead  the  next  morning. 

In  an  instant  he  is  cast  into  grief,  in  a  moment  he  is  crushed. 

And  that  cry  might  be  duplicated  from  almost  any 
page  of  the  Hebrew  scriptures :  the  only  difference  being 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  25 

that  the  Hebrews  combined  all  their  fears  into  one  Great 
Fear.  "The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wis 
dom,"  we  are  told  by  Solomon  of  the  thousand  wives; 
and  the  Psalmist  repeats  it.  "Dominion  and  fear  are  with 
Him,"  cries  Job.  "How  then  can  any  man  be  just  be 
fore  God?  Or  how  can  he  be  clean  that  is  born  of  a 
woman?  Behold,  even  the  moon  hath  no  brightness,  and 
the  stars  are  not  pure  in  His  sight :  How  much  less  man, 
that  is  a  worm?  And  the  son  of  man,  which  is  a  worm?" 
He  goes  on,  in  his  lyrical  rapture,  "Sheol  is  naked  before 
Him,  and  Destruction  hath  no  covering.  .  .  .  The  pil 
lars  of  heaven  tremble  and  are  astonished  at  His  re 
buke.  .  .  .  The  thunder  of  His  power  who  can  under 
stand?"  That  all  this  is  some  of  the  world's  great  poetry 
does  not  in  the  least  alter  the  fact  that  it  is  an  abasement 
of  the  soul,  an  hysterical  perversion  of  the  facts  of  life, 
and  a  preparation  of  the  mind  for  the  seeds  of  Priestcraft. 

The  Book  of  Job  has  been  called  a  "Wisdom-drama" : 
and  what  is  the  denouement  of  this  drama,  what  is  an 
cient  Hebrew  wisdom's  last  word  about  life?  "Where 
fore  I  abhor  myself,"  says  Job,  "and  repent  in  dust  and 
ashes."  The  poor  fellow  has  done  nothing ;  we  have  been 
told  at  the  beginning  that  he  "was  perfect  and  upright, 
and  one  that  feared  God,  and  eschewed  evil."  But  the 
Sabeans  and  the  Chaldeans  rob  him,  and  "the  fire  of  God" 
falls  from  heaven  and  burns  up  his  sheep  and  his  serv 
ants,  and  "a  great  wind  from  the  wilderness"  kills  his 
sons  and  daughters ;  and  then  his  body  becomes  covered 
with  boils — a  phenomenon  caused  in  part  by  worry,  and 
the  consequent  nervous  indigestion,  but  mainly  by  excess 
of  starch  and  deficiency  of  mineral  salts  in  the  diet.  Job, 
however,  has  never  heard  of  the  fasting  cure  for  disease, 


26  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

and  so  he  takes  him  a  potsherd  to  scrape  himself  withal, 
and  he  sits  among  the  ashes — a  highly  unsanitary  pro 
cedure  enforced  by  his  religious  ritual.  So  naturally  he 
feels  like  a  worm,  and  abhors  himself,  and  cries  out :  "I 
know  that  Thou  canst  do  all  things,  and  that  no  purpose 
of  Thine  can  be  restrained."  By  which  utter,  unreasoning 
humility  he  succeeds  in  appeasing  the  Great  Fear,  and 
his  friends  make  a  sacrifice  of  seven  bullocks  and  seven 
rams — a  feast  for  a  whole  templeful  of  priests — and  then 
"the  Lord  gave  Job  twice  as  much  as  he  had  before.  .  .  . 
And  after  this  Job  lived  an  hundred  and  forty  years,  and 
saw  his  sons  and  his  sons'  sons,  even  four  generations." 
You  do  not  have  to  look  very  deeply  into  this  "Wis 
dom-drama"  to  find  out  whose  wisdom  it  is.  Confess 
your  own  ignorance  and  your  own  impotence,  abandon 
yourself  utterly,  and  then  we,  the  sacred  Caste,  the  Keep 
ers  of  the  Holy  Secrets,  will  secure  you  pardon  and  re 
spite — in  exchange  for  fresh  meat.  Here  are  verses  from 
a  psalm  of  the  ancient  Babylonians,  which  "heathen" 
chant  is  identical  in  spirit  and  purpose  with  the  utter 
ances  of  Job : 

The  Sin  that  I  have  wrought,  I  know  not; 
The  unclean  that  I  have  eaten,  I  know  not; 
The  offense  into  which  I  have  walked,  I  know  not.  .  .  . 
The  lord,  in  the  wrath  of  his  heart,  hath  regarded  me; 
The  god,  in  the  anger  of  his  heart,  hath  surrounded  me; 
A  goddess,  known  or  unknown,  hath  wrought  me  sorrow.  .  .  . 
I  sought  for  help,  but  no  one  took  my  hand; 
I  wept,  but  no  one  barkened  to  me.  .  .  . 
The  feet  of  my  goddess  I  kiss,  I  touch  them; 
To  the  god,  known  or  unknown,  I  utter  my  prayer; 
O  god,  known  or  unknown,  turn  thy  countenance,  accept  my 

sacrifice; 

O  goddess,  known  or  unknown,  look  mercifully  on  me,  accept 
my  sacrifice! 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  27 

Salve  Regina! 

And  now  let  tne  reader  leap  three  thousand  years  of 
human  history,  of  toil  and  triumph  of  the  intellect  of 
man ;  and  instead  of  a  Hebrew  manuscript  or  a  Baby 
lonian  brick  there  confronts  him  a  little  publication, 
printed  on  a  modern  rotary  press  in  the  capital  of  the 
United  States  of  America,  bearing  the  date  of  October, 
1914,  and  the  title  "Salve  Regina".  In  it  we  find  "a 
beautiful  prayer",  composed  by  the  late  cardinal  Ram- 
polla;  we  are  told  that  "Pius  X  attached  to  it  an  indul 
gence  of  100  days,  each  time  it  is  piously  recited,  appli 
cable  to  the  souls  in  purgatory." 

O  Blessed  Virgin,  Mother  of  God,  cast  a  glance  from 
Heaven,  where  thou  sittest  as  Queen,  upon  this  poor  sinner, 
your  servant.  Though  conscious  of  his  unworthiness.  ...  he 
blesses  and  exalts  thee  from  his  whole  heart  as  the  purest,  the 
most  beautiful  and  the  most  holy  of  creatures.  He  blesses  thy 
holy  name.  He  blesses  thy  sublime  prerogatives  as  real  Mother 
of  God,  ever  Virgin,  conceived  without  stain  of  sin,  as  co-Re- 
demptress  of  the  human  race.  He  blesses  the  Eternal  Father 
who  chose  you,  etc.  He  blesses  the  Incarnate  Word,  etc.  He 
blesses  the  Divine  Spirit,  etc.  He  blesses,  exalts  and  thanks 
the  most  august  Trinity,  etc.  O  Virgin,  holy  and  merciful.  .  .  . 
be  pleased  to  accept  this  little  homage  of  your  servant,  and 
obtain  for  him  also  from  your  divine  Son  pardon  for  his  sins, 
Amen. 

And  then,  looking  more  closely,  we  discover  the  pur 
pose  of  this  "beautiful  prayer",  and  of  the  neat  little 
paper  which  prints  it.  "Salve  Regina"  is  raising  funds 
for  the  "National  Shrine  of  the  Immaculate  Concep 
tion",  a  home  for  more  priests,  and  Catholic  ladies  who 
desire  to  collect  for  it  may  receive  little  books  which 
they  are  requested  to  return  within  three  months.  Pius 
X  writes  a  letter  of  warm  endorsement,  and  sets  an  ex- 


28  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

ample  by  giving  four  hundred  dollars  "out  of  his  poverty" 
— or,  to  be  more  precise,  out  of  the  poverty  of  the  pitiful 
peasantry  of  Italy.  There  is  included  in  the  paper  a  form 
of  bequest  for  "devoted  clients  of  Our  Blessed  Mother", 
and  at  the  top  of  the  editorial  page  the  most  alluring  of 
all  baits  for  the  loving  hearts  of  the  flock — that  the  names 
of  deceased  relatives  and  friends  may  be  written  in  the 
collection  books,  and  will  be  transferred  to  the  records 
of  the  Shrine,  and  these  persons  "will  share  in  all  its  spir 
itual  benefits".  In  the  days  of  Job  it  was  with  threats 
of  boils  and  poverty  that  the  Priestly  Lie  maintained  it 
self;  but  in  the  case  of  this  blackest  of  all  Terrors,  trans 
planted  to  our  free  Republic  from  the  heart  of  the  Dark 
Ages,  the  wretched  victims  see  before  their  eyes  the  glare 
of  flames,  and  hear  the  shrieks  of  their  loved  ones  writh 
ing  in  torment  through  uncounted  ages  and  eternities. 

Fresh  Meat 

In  the  days  when  I  was  experimenting  with  vegetar 
ianism,  I  sought  earnestly  for  evidence  of  a  non-meat- 
eating  race ;  but  candor  compelled  me  to  admit  that  man 
was  like  the  monkey  and  the  pig  and  the  bear — he  was 
vegetarian  when  he  could  not  help  it.  The  advocates  of 
the  reform  insist  that  meat  as  a  diet  causes  muddy 
brains  and  dulled  nerves ;  but  you  would  certainly  never 
suspect  this  from  a  study  of  history.  What  you  find  in 
history  is  that  all  men  crave  meat,  all  struggle  for  it,  and 
the  strongest  and  cleverest  get  it.  Everywhere  you  find 
the  subject  classes  living  in  the  midst  of  animals  which 
they  tend,  but  whose  flesh  they  rarely  taste.  Even  in 
modern  America,  sweet  land  of  liberty,  our  millions  of 
tenant  farmers  raise  chickens  and  geese  and  turkeys,  and 
hardly  venture  to  consume  as  much  as  an  egg,  but  save 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  29 

everything  for  the  summer-boarder  or  the  buyer  from  the 
city.  It  would  not  be  too  much  to  say  of  the  cultural  rec 
ords  of  early  man  that  they  all  have  to  do,  directly  or 
indirectly,  with  the  reserving  of  fresh  meat  to  the  mas 
ters.  In  J.  T.  Trowbridge's  cheerful  tale  of  the  adven 
tures  of  Captain  Seaborn,  we  are  told  by  the  cannibal 
priest  how  idol-worship  has  ameliorated  the  morals  of 
the  tribe — 

For  though  some  warriors  of  renown 

Continue  anthropophagous, 
'Tis  rare  that  human  flesh  goes  down 

The  low-caste  man's  aesophagus! 

I  suspect  that  we  should  have  to  go  back  to  the  days 
of  the  cave-man  to  find  the  first  lover  of  the  flesh-pots 
who  put  a  taboo  upon  meat,  and  promised  supernatural 
favors  to  all  who  would  exercise  self-control,  and  instead 
of  consuming  their  meat  themselves,  would  bring  it  and 
lay  it  upon  the  sacred  griddle,  or  altar,  where  the  god 
might  come  in  the  night-time  and  partake  of  it.  Cer 
tainly,  at  any  rate,  there  are  few  religions  of  record  in 
which  such  devices  do  not  appear.  The  early  laws  of  the 
Hebrews  are  more  concerned  with  delicatessen  for  the 
priests  than  with  any  other  subject  whatever.  Here,  for 
example,  is  the  way  to  make  a  Nazarite : 

He  shall  offer  his  offering  up  to  the  Lord,  one  he  lamb  of 
the  first  year  without  blemish  for  a  burnt  offering,  and  one  ewe 
lamb  of  the  first  year  without  blemish  for  a  sin  offering,  and 
one  ram  without  blemish  for  peace  offerings,  and  a  basket  of 
unleavened  bread,  cakes  of  fine  flour  mingled  with  oil,  and 
wafers  of  unleavened  bread  anointed  with  oil,  and  their  meat 
offerings. 

And  the  law  goes  on  to  instruct  the  priests  to  take 
certain  choice  parts  and  "wave  them  for  a  wave  offering 


30  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

before  the  Lord :  this  is  holy  for  the  priest."  What  was 
done  with  the  other  portions  we  are  not  told ;  but  earlier 
in  this  same  "Book  of  Numbers"  we  find  the  general 
law  that 

Every  offering  of  all  the  holy  things  of  the  children  of 
Israel,  which  they  bring  unto  the  priest,  shall  be  his.  And  ev 
ery  man's  hallowed  things  shall  be  his:  whatsoever  any  man 
giveth  to  the  priest,  it  shall  be  his. 

In  the  same  way  we  are  told  by  Viscount  Amberley 
that  the  priests  of  Ceylon  first  present  the  gifts  to  the 
god,  and  then  eat  them.  Among  the  Parsees,  when  a  man 
dies,  the  relatives  must  bring  four  new  robes  to  the 
priests ;  if  they  do  this,  the  priests  wear  the  robes ;  if  they 
fail  to  do  it,  the  dead  man  appears  naked  before  the  judg 
ment-throne.  The  devotees  are  instructed  that  "he  who 
performs  this  rite  succeeds  in  both  worlds,  and  obtains 
a  firm  footing  in  both  worlds."  Among  the  Buddhists, 
the  followers  give  alms  to  the  monks,  and  are  told  spe 
cifically  what  advantages  will  thereby  accrue  to  them.  In 
the  Aitareyo  Brahmanam  of  the  Rig- Veda  we  read 

He  who,  knowing  this,  sacrifices  according  to  this  rite,  is 
born  from  the  womb  of  Agni  and  the  offerings,  participates  in 
the  nature  of  the  Rik,  Yajus,  and  Saman,  the  Veda  (sacred 
knowledge),  the  Brahma  (sacred  element)  and  immortality,  and 
is  absorbed  into  the  deity. 

Among  the  Parsees  the  priest  eats  the  bread  and  drinks 
the  haoma,  or  juice  of  a  plant,  considered  to  be  both  a 
plant  and  a  god.  Among  the  Episcopalians,  a  contem 
porary  Christian  sect,  the  sacred  juice  is  that  of  the 
grape,  and  the  priest  is  not  allowed  to  throw  away  what 
is  left  of  it,  but  is  ordered  "reverently  to  consume  it."  In 
as  much  as  the  priest  is  the  sole  judge  of  how  much  good 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  31 

sherry  wine  he  shall  consecrate  previous  to  the  cere 
mony,  it  is  to  be  expected  that  the  priests  of  this  cult 
should  be  lukewarm  towards  the  prohibition  movement, 
and  should  piously  refuse  to  administer  their  sacrament 
with  unfermented  and  uninteresting  grape-juice. 

Priestly  Empires 

In  every  human  society  of  which  we  have  record 
there  has  been  one  class  which  has  done  the  hard  and 
exhausting  work,  the  "hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of 
water" ;  and  there  has  been  another,  much  smaller  class 
which  has  done  the  directing.  To  belong  to  this  latter 
class  is  to  work  also,, but  with  the  head  instead  of  the 
hands ;  it  is  also  to  enjoy  the  good  things  of  life,  to  live 
in  the  best  houses,  to  eat  the  best  food,  to  have  choice  of 
the  most  desirable  women;  it  is  to  have  leisure  to  culti 
vate  the  mind  and  appreciate  the  arts,  to  acquire  graces 
and  distinctions,  to  give  laws  and  moral  codes,  to  shape 
fashions  and  tastes,  to  be  revered  and  regarded — in 
short,  to  have  Power.  How  to  get  this  Power  and  to 
hold  it  has  been  the  first  object  of  the  thoughts  of  men 
from  the  beginning  of  time. 

The  most  obvious  method  is  by  the  sword;  but  this 
method  is  uncertain,  for  any  man  may  take  up  a  sword, 
and  some  may  succeed  with  it.  It  will  be  found  that 
empires  based  upon  military  force  alone,  however  cruel 
they  may  be,  are  not  permanent,  and  therefore  not  so 
dangerous  to  progress ;  it  is  only  when  resistance  is  par 
alyzed  by  the  agency  of  Superstition,  that  the  race  can 
be  subjected  to  systems  of  exploitation  for  hundreds  and 
even  thousands  of  years.  The  ancient  empires  were  all 
priestly  empires;  the  kings  ruled  because  they  obeyed 


32  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

the  will  of  the  priests,  taught  to  them  from  childhood  as 
the  word  of  the  gods. 

Thus,  for  instance,  Prescott  tells  us: 

Terror,  not  love,  was  the  spring  of  education  with  the  Az 
tecs.  .  .  .  Such  was  the  crafty  policy  of  the  priests,  who,  by 
reserving  to  themselves  the  business  of  instruction,  were  en 
abled  to  mould  the  young  and  plastic  mind  according  to  their 
own  wills,  and  to  train  it  early  to  implicit  reverence  for  re 
ligion  and  its  ministers. 

The  historian  goes  on  to  indicate  the  economic  har 
vest  of  this  teaching: 

To  each  of  the  principal  temples,  lands  were  annexed  for 
the  maintenance  of  the  priests.  The  estates  were  augmented 
by  the  policy  or  devotion  of  successive  princes,  until,  under  the 
last  Montezuma,  they  had  swollen  to  an  enormous  extent,  and 
covered  every  district  of  the  empire. 

And  this  concerning  the  frightful  system  of  human 
sacrifices,  whereby  the  priestly  caste  maintained  the  pres 
tige  of  its  divinities : 

At  the  dedication  of  the  temple  of  Huitzilopochtli,  in  1486, 
the  prisoners,  who  for  some  years  had  been  reserved  for  the 
purpose,  were  ranged  in  files,  forming  a  procession  nearly  two 
miles  long.  The  ceremony  consumed  several  days,  and  seventy 
thousand  captives  are  said  to  have  perished  at  the  shrine  of 
this  terrible  deity. 

The  same  system  appears  in  Professor  Jastrow's  ac 
count  of  the  priesthood  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria : 

The  ultimate  source  of  all  law  being  the  deity  himself,  the 
original  legal  tribunal  was  the  place  where  the  image  or  sym 
bol  of  the  god  stood.  A  legal  decision  was  an  oracle  or  omen, 
indicative  of  the  will  of  the  god.  The  power  thus  lodged  in  the 
priests  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria  was  enormous.  They  virtually 
held  in  their  hands  the  life  and  death  of  the  people. 

And  of  the  business  side  of  this  vast  religious  system  : 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  33 

The  temples  were  the  natural  depositories  of  the  legal  arch 
ives,  which  in  the  course  of  centuries  grew  to  veritably  enor 
mous  proportions.  Records  were  made  of  all  decisions;  the 
facts  were  set  forth,  and  duly  attested  by  witnesses.  Business 
and  marriage  contracts,  loans  and  deeds  of  sale  were  in  like 
manner  drawn  up  in  the  presence  of  official  scribes,  who  were 
also  priests.  In  this  way  all  commercial  transactions  received 
the  written  sanction  of  the  religious  organization.  The  tem 
ples  themselves — at  least  in  the  large  centres — entered  into 
business  relations  with  the  populace.  In  order  to  maiatain  the 
large  household  represented  by  such  an  organization  as  that  of 
the  temple  of  Enlil  of  Nippur,  that  of  Ningirsu  at  Lagash,  that 
of  Marduk  at  Babylon,  or  that  of  Shamash  at  Sippar,  large  hold 
ings  of  land  were  required  which,  cultivated  by  agents  for  the 
priests,  or  farmed  out  with  stipulations  for  a  goodly  share  of 
the  produce,  secured  an  income  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
temple  officials.  The  enterprise  of  the  temples  was  expanded 
to  the  furnishing  of  loans  at  interest — in  later  periods,  at  20% — 
to  barter  in  slaves,  to  dealings  in  lands,  besides  engaging  labor 
ic :  work  of  all  kinds  directly  needed  for  the  temples.  A  large 
quantity  of  the  business  documents  found  in  the  temple  arch 
ives  are  concerned  with  the  business  affairs  of  the  temple,  and  we 
are  justified  in  including  the  temples  in  the  large  centres  as 
among  the  most  important  business  institutions  of  the  country. 
In  financial  or  monetary  transactions  the  position  of  the  tem 
ples  was  not  unlike  that  of  national  banks.  .  .  . 

And  so  on.  We  may  venture  the  guess  that  the 
learned  professor  said  more  in  that  last  sentence  than 
he  himself  intended,  for  his  lectures  were  delivered  in 
that  temple  of  plutocracy,  the  University  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  and  paid  out  of  an  endowment  which  specifies 
that  "all  polemical  subjects  shall  be  positively  excluded!'* 

Prayer-wheels 

These  priestly  empires  exist  in  the  world  today.  If 
we  wish  to  find  them  we  have  only  to  ask  ourselves: 


34  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

What  countries  are  making  no  contribution  to  the  prog 
ress  of  the  race?  What  countries  have  nothing  to  give 
us,  whether  in  art,  science,  or  industry? 

For  example,  Gervaise  tells  us  of  the  Talapoins,  or 
priests  of  Siam,  that  "they  are  exempted  from  all  public 
charges,  they  salute  nobody,  while  everybody  prostrates 
himself  before  them.  They  are  maintained  at  the  public 
expense."  In  the  same  way  we  read  of  the  negroes  of 
the  Caribbean  islands  that  "their  priests  and  priestesses 
exercise  an  almost  unlimited  power."  Miss  Kingsley,  in 
her  "West  African  Studies",  tells  us  that  if  we  desire  to 
understand  the  institutions  of  this  district,  we  must  study 
the  native's  religion. 

For  his  religion  has  so  firm  a  grasp  upon  his  mind  that 
it  influences  everything  he  does.  It  is  not  a  thing  apart,  as  the 
religion  of  the  Europeans  is  at  times.  The  African  cannot  say, 
"Oh,  that  is  all  right  from  a  religious  point  of  view,  but  one 
must  be  practical."  To  be  practical,  to  get  on  in  the  world,  to 
live  the  day  and  night  through,  he  must  be  right  in  the  religious 
point  of  view,  namely,  must  be  on  working  terms  with  the 
great  world  of  spirits  around  him.  The  knowledge  of  this  spirit 
world  constitutes  the  religion  of  the  African,  and  his  customs 
and  ceremonies  arise  from  his  idea  of  the  best  way  to  influ 
ence  it. 

Or  consider  Henry  Savage  Landor's  account  of 
Thibet: 

In  Lhassa  and  many  other  sacred  places  fanatical  pilgrims 
make  circumambulations,  sometimes  for  miles  and  miles,  and  for 
days  together,  covering  the  entire  distance  lying  flat  upon  their 
bodies.  .  .  .  From  the  ceiling  of  the  temple  hang  hundreds  of 
long  strips,  katas,  offered  by  pilgrims  to  the  temple,  and  be 
coming  so  many  flying  prayers  when  hung  up — for  mechanical 
praying  in  every  way  is  prominent  in  Thibet.  .  .  .  Thus  instead 
of  having  to  learn  by  heart  long  and  varied  prayers,  all  you 
have  to  do  is  to  stuff  the  entire  prayer-book  into  a  prayer-wheel, 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  35 

and  revolve  it  while  repeating  as  fast  as  you  can  four  words 
meaning,  "O  God,  the  gem  emerging  from  the  lotus-flower.".  .  .  . 
The  attention  of  the  pilgrims  is  directed  to  a  large  box,  or  often 
a  big  bowl,  where  they  may  deposit  whatever  offerings  they  can 
spare,  and  it  must  be  said  that  their  religious  ideas  are  so 
strongly  developed  that  they  will  dispose  of  a  considerable  por 
tion  of  their  money  in  this  fashion.  .  .  .  The  Lamas  are  very 
clev  •  in  many  ways,  and  have  a  great  hold  over  the  entire 
country.  They  are  ninety  per  cent  of  them  unscrupulous 
scamps,  depraved  in  every  way  and  given  to  every  sort  of  vice. 
So  are  the  women  Lamas.  They  live  and  sponge  on  the  cre 
dulity  and  ignorance  of  the  crowds;  it  is  to  maintain  this  ignor 
ance,  upon  which  their  luxurious  life  depends,  that  foreign  influ 
ence  of  every  kind  is  strictly  kept  out  of  the  country. 

The  Butcher-Gods 

In  this  last  sentence  we  have  summed  up  the  funda 
mental  fact  about  institutionalized  religion.  Wherever 
belief  and  ritual  have  become  the  means  of  livelihood  of 
a  class,  all  innovation  will  of  necessity  be  taken  as  an 
attack  upon  that  class;  it  will  be  literally  a  crime — 
robbing  the  priests  of  their  age-long  privileges.  And  of 
course  they  will  oppose  the  robber — using  every  weapon 
of  terrorism,  both  of  this  world  and  the  next.  They  will 
require  the  submission,  not  merely  of  their  own  people, 
but  of  their  neighbors,  and  their  jealousy  of  rival  priestly 
castes  will  be  a  cause  of  wars.  The  story  of  the  early 
days  of  mankind  is  a  sickening  record  of  torture  and 
slaughter  in  the  name  of  ten  thousand  butcher-gods. 

Thus,  for  example,  we  read  in  the  Hebrew  religious 
records  how  the  priests  were  engaged  in  establishing  the 
prestige  of  a  fetish  called  "the  ark" ;  and  how  the  people 
of  one  tribe  violated  this  fetish  and  wakened  the  wrath 
of  Jehovah,  the  god. 


36  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

And  he  smote  the  men  of  Beth-shemesh,  because  they  had 
looked  into  the  ark  of  the  Lord,  even  he  smote  of  the  people 
fifty  thousand  and  three  score  and  ten  men;  and  the  people 
lamented,  because  the  Lord  had  smitten  many  of  the  people 
with  a  great  slaughter.  And  the  men  of  Beth-shemesh  said, 
Who  is  able  to  stand  before  this  holy  Lord  God? 

This  terrible  old  Hebrew  divinity  said  of  himself  thai 
he  was  "a  jealous  god".  Throughout  the  time  of  his  sway 
he  issued  through  his  ministers  precise  instructions  for 
the  most  revolting  cruelties,  the  extermination  of  whole 
nations  of  men,  women  and  children,  whose  sole  offense 
was  that  they  did  not  pay  tribute  to  Jehovah's  priests. 
Thus,  for  example,  the  chief  of  his  prophets,  Moses,  called 
the  people  together,  and  with  all  solemnity,  and  with 
many  warnings,  handed  down  ten  commandments  graven 
upon  stone  tablets ;  he  went  on  to  set  fort' .  how  the  per- 
pie  were  to  set  upon  and  rob  their  neighbors,  and  gave 
them  these  blood-thirsty  instructions : 

When  the  Lord  thy  God  shall  bring  thee  into  the  land 
whither  thou  goest  to  possess  it,  and  hath  cast  out  many  na 
tions  before  thee,  the  Hittites,  and  the  Girgashites,  and  the 
Amorites,  and  the  Canaanites,  and  the  Perizzites,  and  the  Hiv- 
ites,  and  the  Jebusites,  seven  nations  greater  and  mightier  than 
thou;  And  when  the  Lord  thy  God  shall  deliver  them  before 
thee;  thou  shalt  smite  them,  and  utterly  destroy  them;  thou 
shalt  make  no  covenant  with  them,  nor  shew  mercy  unto 
them:  .  .  .  But  thus  shall  ye  deal  with  them;  ye  shall  destroy 
their  altars,  and  break  down  their  images,  and  cut  down  their 
groves,  and  burn  their  graven  images  with  fire.  For  thou  art 
a  holy  people  unto  the  Lord  thy  God:  the  Lord  thy  God  hath 
chosen  thee  to  be  a  special  people  unto  himself,  above  all  peo 
ple  that  are  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 

The  records  of  this  Jehovah  are  full  of  similar  hor 
rors.  He  sent  his  chosen  people  out  to  destroy  the  Mid- 
ianites,  and  they  slew  all  the  males,  but  this  was  not 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  37 

sufficient,  and  Moses  was  wroth,  and  commanded  them 
to  kill  all  the  married  women,  and  to  take  the  single 
women  "for  themselves".  We  are  told  that  sixteen  thou 
sand  single  women  were  spared,  of  whom  "the  Lord's 
tribute  was  thirty  and  two !"  In  the  Book  of  Joshua  we 
read  that  he  had  an  interview  with  a  supernatural  per 
sonage  called  "the  captain  of  the  Lord's  host",  and  how 
this  captain  had  given  to  him  a  magic  spell  which  would 
destroy  the  city  of  Jericho.  The  city  should  be  accursed, 
"even  it  and  all  that  are  therein,  to  the  Lord";  every 
living  thing  except  one  traitor-harlot  was  to  be  slaugh 
tered,  and  all  the  wealth  of  the  city  reserved  to  the 
priestly  caste.  This  was  carried  out  to  the  letter,  except 
that  "Achan,  the  son  of  Carmi,  the  son  of  Zabdi,  the  son 
of  Zerah,  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  took  of  the  accursed 
thing" — that  is,  he  hid  some  gold  and  silver  in  his  tent ; 
whereupon  the  army  met  with  a  defeat,  and  everybody 
knew  that  something  was  wrong,  and  Joshua  rent  his 
clothes  and  fell  to  the  earth  upon  his  face  before  the  ark 
of  the  Lord,  and  got  another  message  from  Jehovah,  to 
the  effect  that  the  guilty  man  should  be  burned  with 
fire,  "he  and  all  that  he  hath." 

And  Joshua,  and  all  Israel  with  him,  took  Achan  the  son 
of  Zerah,  and  the  silver,  and  the  garment,  and  the  wedge  of 
gold,  and  his  sons,  and  his  daughters,  and  his  oxen,  and  his 
asses,  and  his  sheep,  and  his  tent,  and  all  that  he  had:  and  they 
brought  them  unto  the  Valley  of  Achor.  And  Joshua  said,  Why 
hast  thou  troubled  us?  the  Lord  shall  trouble  thee  this  day. 
And  all  Israel  stoned  him  with  stones,  and  burned  them  with 
fire,  after  they  had  stoned  him  with  stones. 

We  have  no  means  of  knowing  what  was  the  char 
acter  of  the  unfortunate  inhabitants  of  the  city  of  Jericho, 
nor  of  the  Hittites  and  the  Girgashites  and  the  Amorites 


38  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

and  all  the  rest  of  the  victims  of  Jehovah.  To  be  sure, 
we  are  told  by  the  Hebrew  priests  that  they  sacrificed 
their  children  to  their  gods ;  but  then,  consider  what  we 
should  believe  about  the  Hebrew  religion,  if  we  took  the 
word  of  rival  priestly  castes !  Consider,  for  example,  that 
in  this  twentieth  century  we  saw  an  orthodox  Jew  tried 
in  a  Russian  court  of  law  for  having  made  a  sacrifice  of 
Christian  babies;  nevertheless  we  know  that  the  Jews 
represent  a  considerable  part  of  the  intelligence  and 
idealism  of  Russia.  We  know  in  the  same  way  that  the 
Moors  had  most  of  the  culture  and  all  of  the  scientific 
knowledge  of  Spain,  that  the  Huguenots  had  most  of  the 
conscience  and  industry  of  France;  and  we  know  that 
they  were  massacred  or  driven  out  to  death  by  the 
priestly  castes  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  Holy  Inquisition 

Let  us  have  one  glimpse  of  the  conditions  in  those 
mediaeval  times,  so  that  we  may  know  what  we  our 
selves  have  escaped.  In  the  fifteenth  century  there  was 
established  in  Europe  the  cult  of  a  three-headed  god, 
whose  priests  had  won  lordship  over  a  continent.  They 
were  enormously  wealthy,  and  unthinkably  corrupt ;  they 
sold  to  the  rich  the  license  to  commit  every  possible 
crime,  and  they  held  the  poor  in  ignorance  and  degradaj 
tion.  Among  the  comparatively  intelligent  and  freedom- 
loving  people  of  Bohemia  there  arose  a  great  reformer, 
John  Huss,  himself  a  priest,  protesting  against  the  cor 
ruptions  of  his  order.  They  trapped  him  into  their  power 
by  means  of  a  "safe-conduct" — which  they  repudiated 
because  no  promise  to  a  heretic  could  have  validity. 
They  found  him  guilty  of  having  taught,  the  hateful  doc- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  39 

trine  that  a  priest  who  committed  crimes  could  not  give 
absolution  for  the  crimes  of  others ;  and  they  held  an  auto 
de  fe — which  means  a  "sentence  of  faith."  As  we  read 
in  Lea's  "History  of  the  Inquisition": 

The  cathedral  of  Constance  was  crowded  with  Sigismund 
(the  Emperor)  and  his  nobles,  the  great  officers  of  the  empire 
with  their  insignia,  the  prelates  in  their  splendid  robes.  While 
mass  was  sung,  Huss,  as  an  excommunicate,  was  kept  waiting 
at  the  door;  when  brought  in  he  was  placed  on  an  elevated 
bench  by  a  table  on  which  stood  a  coffer  containing  priestly 
vestments.  After  some  preliminaries,  including  a  sermon  by 
the  Bishop  of  Lodi,  in  which  he  assured  Sigismwid  that  the 
events  of  that  day  would  confer  on  him  immortal  glory,  the 
articles  of  which  Huss  was  convicted  were  recited.  In  vain  he 
protested  that  he  believed  in  transubstantiation  and  in  the 
validity  of  the  sacrament  in  polluted  hands.  He  was  ordered 
to  hold  his  tongue,  and  on  his  persisting  the  beadles  were  told 
to  silence  him,  but  in  spite  of  this  he  continued  to  utter  protests. 
The  sentence  was  then  read  in  the  name  of  the  council,  con 
demning  him  both  for  his  written  errors  and  those  which  had 
been  proven  by  witnesses.  He  was  declared  a  pertinacious  and 
incorrigible  heretic  who  did  not  desire  to  return  to  the  Church; 
his  books  were  ordered  to  be  burned,  and  himself  to  be  de 
graded  from  the  priesthood  and  abandoned  to  the  secular  court. 
Seven  bishops  arrayed  him  in  priestly  garb  and  warned  him  to 
recant  while  yet  there  was  time.  He  turned  to  the  crowd,  and 
Vv-lth  broken  voice  declared  that  he  could  not  confess  the  errors 
which  he  never  entertained,  lest  he  should  lie  to  God,  when  the 
bishops  interrupted  him,  crying  that  they  had  waited  long 
enough,  for  he  was  obstinate  in  his  heresy.  He  was  degraded 
in  the  usual  manner,  stripped  of  his  sacerdotal  vestments,  his 
fingers  scraped;  but  when  the  tonsure  was  to  be  disposed  of,  an 
absurd  quarrel  arose  among  the  bishops  as  to  whether  the  head 
should  be  shaved  with  a  razor  or  the  tonsure  be  destroyed  with 
scissors.  Scissors  won  the  day,  and  a  cross  was  cut  in  his 
hair.  Then  on  his  head  was  placed  a  conical  paper  cap,  a  cubit 
in  height,  adorned  with  painted  devils  and  the  inscription,  "This 
is  the  heresiarch." 


40  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

The  place  of  execution  was  a  meadow  near  the  river,  to 
which  he  was  conducted  by  two  thousand  armed  men,  with 
Palsgrave  Louis  at  their  head,  and  a  vast  crowd,  including  many 
nobles,  prelates,  and  cardinals.  The  route  followed  was  cir 
cuitous,  in  order  that  he  might  be  carried  past  the  episcopal 
palace,  in  front  of  which  his  books  were  burning,  whereat  he 
smiled.  Pity  from  man  there  was  none  to  look  for,  but  he 
sought  comfort  on  high,  repeating  to  himself,  "Christ  Jesus, 
Son  of  the  living  God,  have  mercy  upon  us!"  and  when  he 
came  in  sight  of  the  stake  he  fell  on  his  knees  and  prayed.  He 
was  asked  if  he  wished  to  confess,  and  said  that  he  would  gladly 
do  so  if  there  w^re  space.  A  wide  circle  was  formed,  and  Ulrich 
Schorand,  who,  according  to  custom,  had  been  providently  em 
powered  to  take  advantage  of  final  weakening,  came  forward, 
saying,  "Dear  sir  and  master,  if  you  will  recant  your  unbelief 
and  heresy,  for  which  you  must  suffer,  I  will  willingly  hear 
your  confession;  but  if  you  will  not,  you  know  right  well  that, 
according  to  canon  law,  no  one  can  administer  the  sacrament  to 
a  heretic."  To  this  Huss  answered,  "It  is  not  necessary:  I 
am  not  a  mortal  sinner."  His  paper  crown  fell  off  and  he 
smiled  as  his  guards  replaced  it.  He  desired  to  take  leave  of 
his  keepers,  and  when  they  were  brought  to  him  he  thanked 
them  for  their  kindness,  saying  that  they  had  been  to  him  rather 
brothers  than  jailers.  Then  he  commenced  to  address  the  crowd 
in  German,  telling  them  that  he  suffered  for  errors  which  he 
did  not  hold,  and  he  was  cut  short.  When  bound  to  the  stake, 
two  cartloads  of  fagots  and  straw  were  piled  up  around  him, 
and  the  palsgrave  and  vogt  for  the  last  time  adjured  him  to 
abjure.  Even  yet  he  could  save  himself,  but  only  repeated  that 
he  had  been  convicted  by  false  witnesses  on  errors  never  enter 
tained  by  him.  They  clapped  their  hands  and  then  withdrew, 
and  the  executioners  applied  the  fire.  Twice  Huss  was  heard 
to  exclaim,  "Christ  Jesus,  Son  of  the  living  God,  have  mercy 
upon  me!"  then  a  wind  springing  up  and  blowing  the  flames  and 
smoke  into  his  face  checked  further  utterances,  but  his  head 
was  seen  to  shake  and  his  lips  to  move  while  one  might  twice 
or  thrice  recite  a  paternoster.  The  tragedy  was  over;  the  sorely- 
tried  soul  had  escaped  from  its  tormentors,  and  the  bitterest 
enemies  of  the  reformer  could  not  refuse  to  him  the  praise  that 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  41 

no  philosopher  of  old  had  faced  death  with  more  composure 
than  he  had  shown  in  his  dreadful  extremity.  No  faltering  of 
the  voice  had  betrayed  an  internal  struggle.  Palsgrave  Louis, 
seeing  Huss's  mantle  on  the  arm  of  one  of  the  executioners, 
ordered  it  thrown  into  the  flames  lest  it  should  be  reverenced 
as  a  relic,  and  promised  the  man  to  compensate  him.  With  the 
same  view  the  body  was  carefully  reduced  to  ashes  and  thrown 
into  the  Rhine,  and  even  the  earth  around  the  stake  was  dug 
up  and  carted  off;  yet  the  Bohemians  long  hovered  around 
the  spot  and  carried  home  fragments  of  the  neighboring  clay, 
which  they  reverenced  as  relics  of  their  martyr.  The  next  day 
thanks  were  returned  to  God  in  a  solemn  procession  in  which 
figured  Sigismund  and  his  queen,  the  princes  and  nobles,  nine 
teen  cardinals,  two  patriarchs,  seventy-seven  bishops,  and  all 
the  clergy  of  the  council.  A  few  days  later  Sigismund,  who  had 
delayed  his  departure  for  Spain  to  see  the  matter  concluded, 
left  Constance,  feeling  that  his  work  was  done. 

Hell-Fire 

If  such  a  scene  could  be  witnessed  in  the  world  to 
day,  it  would  only  be  in  some  remote  and  wholly  savage 
place,  such  as  the  mountains  of  Hayti,  or  the  Solomon 
Islands.  It  could  no  longer  happen  in  any  civilized 
country ;  the  reason  being,  not  any  abatement  of  the  pre 
tensions  of  the  priesthood,  but  solely  the  power  of 
science,  embodied  in  the  physical  arm  of  a  secular  State. 
The  advance  of  that  arm  the  church  has  fought  syste 
matically,  in  every  country,  and  at  every  point.  To 
quote  Buckle:  "A  careful  study  of  the  history  of  re 
ligious  toleration  will  prove  that  in  every  Christian 
country  where  it  has  been  adopted,  it  has  been  forced 
upon  the  clergy  by  the  authority  of  the  secular  classes." 
The  wolf  of  superstition  has  been  driven  into  its  lair; 
but  it  has  backed  away  snarling,  and  it  still  crouches, 
watching  for  a  chance  to  spring.  The  Church  which 


42  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

burned  John  Huss,  which  burned  Giordano  Bruno  for 
teaching  that  the  earth  moves  round  the  sun — that  same 
church,  in  the  name  of  the  same  three-headed  god,  sent 
out  Francesco  Ferrer  to  the  firing-squad;  if  it  does  not 
do  the  same  thing  to  the  author  of  this  book,  it  will  be 
solely  because  of  the  police.  Not  being  allowed  to  burn 
me  here,  the  clergy  will  vent  their  holy  indignation  by 
sentencing  me  to  eternal  burning  in  a  future  world  which 
they  have  created,  and  which  they  run  to  suit  them 
selves. 

It  is  a  fact,  the  significance  of  which  cannot  be  ex 
aggerated,  that  the  measure  of  the  civilization  which  any 
nation  has  attained  is  the  extent  to  which  it  has  cur 
tailed  the  power  of  institutionalized  religion.  Those  peo 
ples  which  are  wholly  under  the  sway  of  the  priesthood, 
such  as  Thibetans  and  Koreans,  Siamese  and  Caribbeans, 
are  peoples  among  whom  the  intellectual  life  does  not 
exist.  Farther  in  advance  are  Hindoos  and  Turks,  who 
are  religious,  but  not  exclusively.  Still  farther  on  the 
way  are  Spaniards  and  Irish ;  here,  for  example,  is  a  flash 
light  of  the  Irish  peasantry,  given  by  one  of  their  num 
ber,  Patrick  MacGill: 

The  merchant  was  a  great  friend  of  the  parish  priest,  who 
always  told  the  people  if  they  did  not  pay  their  debts  they 
would  burn  for  ever  and  ever  in  hell.  "The  fires  of  eternity 
will  make  you  sorry  for  the  debts  that  you  did  not  pay,"  said  the 
priest.  "What  is  eternity?"  he  would  ask  in  a  solemn  voice 
from  the  altar  steps.  "If  a  man  tried  to  count  the  sands  on 
the  sea-shore  and  took  a  million  years  to  count  every  single 
grain,  how  long  would  it  take  him  to  count  them  all?  A  long 
time,  you'll  say.  But  that  time  is  nothing  to  eternity.  Just 
think  of  it!  Burning  in  hell  while  a  man,  taking  a  million  years 
to  count  a  grain  of  sand,  counts  all  the  sand  on  the  sea-shore. 
And  this  because  you  did  not  pay  Farley  McKeown  his  lawful 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  43 

debts,  his  lawful  debts  within  the  letter  of  the  law."  That  con 
cluding  phrase,  "within  the  letter  of  the  law,"  struck  terror 
into  all  who  listened,  and  no  one,  maybe  not  even  the  priest 
himself,  knew  what  it  meant. 

There  is  light  in  Ireland  to-day,  and  hope  for  an 
Irish  culture ;  the  thing  to  be  noted  is  that  it  comes  from 
two  movements,  one  for  agricultural  co-operation  and 
the  other  for  political  independence — both  of  them  defi 
nitely  and  specifically  non-religious.  This  same  thing 
has  been  true  of  the  movements  which  have  helped  on 
happier  nations,  such  as  the  republics  of  France  and 
America,  which  have  put  an  end  to  the  power  of  the 
priestly  caste  to  take  property  by  force,  and  to  dominate 
the  mind  of  the  child  without  its  parents'  consent. 

This  is  as  far  as  any  nation  has  so  far  gone;  it  has 
apparently  not  yet  occurred  to  any  legislature  that  the 
State  may  owe  a  duty  to  the  child  to  protect  its  mind 
from  being  poisoned,  even  though  it  has  the  misfortune 
to  be  born  of  poisoned  parents.  It  is  still  permitted  that 
parents  should  terrify  their  little  ones  with  images  of  a 
personal  devil  and  a  hell  of  eternal  brimstone  and  sul 
phur;  it  is  permitted  to  found  schools  for  the  teaching 
of  devil-doctrines;  it  is  permitted  to  organize  gigantic 
campaigns  and  systematically  to  infect  whole  cities  full 
of  men,  women  and  children  with  hell-fire  phobias.  In 
the  American  city  where  I  write  one  may  see  gather 
ings  of  people  sunk  upon  their  knees,  even  rolling  on  the 
ground  in  convulsions,  moaning,  sobbing,  screaming  to 
be  delivered  from  such  torments.  I  open  my  morning 
paper  and  read  of  the  arrest  of  five  men  and  seven 
women  in  Los  Angeles,  members  of  a  sect  known  as  the 
"Church  of  the  Living  God",  upon  a  charge  of  having 
disturbed  the  peace  of  their  neighbors.  The  police  of- 


44  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

ficers  testified  that  the  accused  claimed  to  be  possessed 
of  the  divine  spirit,  and  that  as  signs  of  this  possession 
they  "crawled  on  the  floor,  grunted  like  pigs  and  barked 
like  dogs."  There  were  "other  acts,  even  more  start 
ling",  about  which  the  newspapers  did  not  go  into  de 
tails.  And  again,  a  week  or  two  later,  I  read  how  a  wom 
an  has  been  heard  screaming,  and  found  tied  to  a  bed 
post,  being  whipped  by  a  man.  She  belonged  to  a  relig 
ious  sect  which  had  found  her  guilty  of  witchcraft.  An 
other  woman  was  about  to  shoot  her,  but  this  woman's 
nerve  failed,  and  the  "high  priest"  was  called  in,  who 
decreed  a  whipping.  The  victim  explained  to  the  police 
that  she  would  have  deserved  to  be  whipped  had  she 
really  been  a  witch,  but  a  mistake  had  been  made^-it 
was  another  woman  who  was  the  witch.  And  again  in 
the  Los  Angeles  "Times"  I  read  a  perfectly  serious  news 
item,  telling  how  a  certain  man  awakened  one  morning, 
and  found  on  his  pillow  where  his  head  had  lain  a  per 
fect  reproduction  of  the  head  of  Christ  with  its  crown  of 
thorns.  He  called  in  his  neighbors  to  witness  the  mir 
acle,  and  declared  that  while  he  was  not  superstitious, 
he  knew  that  such  a  thing  could  not  have  happened  by 
chance,  and  he  knew  what  it  was  intended  to  signify — 
he  would  buy  more  Liberty  Bonds  and  be  more  ardent 
in  his  support  of  the  war! 

And  this  is  the  world  in  which  our  scientists  and 
men  of  culture  think  that  the  battle  of  the  intellect  is 
won,  and  that  it  is  no  longer  necessary  to  spend  our 
energies  in  fighting  "Religion !" 


BOOK  TWO 

The  Church  of  Good  Society 


Within  the  House  of  Mammon  his  priesthood  stands 

alert 

By  mysteries  attended,  by  dusk  and  splendors  girt, 
Knowing,  for  faiths  departed,  his  own  shall  still  endure, 
And  they  be  found  his  chosen,  untroubled,  solemn,  sure. 

Within  the  House  of  Mammon  the  golden  altar  lifts 
Where  dragon-lamps  are  shrouded  as  costly  incense 

drifts — 

A  dust  of  old  ideals,  now  fragrant  from  the  coals, 
To  tell  of  hopes  long-ended,  to  tell  the  death  of  souls 

Sterling. 


45 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  47 

The  Rain  Makers 

I  begin  with  the  Church  of  Good  Society,  because  it 
happens  to  be  the  Church  in  which  I  was  brought  up. 
Reading  this  statement,  some  of  my  readers  suspected 
me  of  snobbish  pride.  I  search  my  heart ;  yes,  it  brings 
a  hidden  thrill  that  as  far  back  as  I  can  remember  I 
knew  this  atmosphere  of  urbanity,  that  twice  every  Sun 
day  those  melodious  and  hypnotizing  incantations  were 
chanted  in  my  childish  ears!  I  take  up  the  book  of 
ritual,  done  in  aristocratic  black  leather  with  gold  let 
tering,  and  the  old  worn  volume  brings  me  strange 
stirrings  of  recollected  awe.  But  I  endeavor  to  re 
press  these  vestigial  emotions  and  to  see  the  volume — 
not  as  a  message  from  God  to  Good  Society,  but  as  a 
landmark  of  man's  age-long  struggle  against  myth  and 
dogma  used  as  a  source  of  income  and  a  shield  to 
privilege. 

In  the  beginning,  of  course,  the  priest  and  the  ma 
gician  ruled  the  field.  But  today,  as  I  examine  this 
"Book  of  Common  Prayer",  I  discover  that  there  is  at 
least  one  spot  out  of  which  he  has  been  cleared  en 
tirely  ;  there  appears  no  prayer  to  planets  to  stand  still, 
or  to  comets  to  go  away.  The  "Church  of  Good  Society" 
has  discovered  astronomy !  But  if  any  astronomer  at 
tributes  this  to  his  instruments  with  their  marvelous 
accuracy,  let  him  at  least  stop  to  consider  my  "eco 
nomic  interpretation"  of  the  phenomenon — the  fact 
that  the  heavenly  bodies  affect  the  destinies  of  mankind 
so  little  that  there  has  not  been  sufficient  emolument 
to  justify  the  priest  in  holding  on  to  his  job  as  astrol 
oger. 

But  when  you  come  to  the  field  of  meteorology,  what 
a  difference !  Has  any  utmost  precision  of  barometer 


48  THE  PKOFITS  OF  RELIGION 

been  able  to  drive  the  priest  out  of  his  prerogatives  as 
rainmaker?  Not  even  in  the  most  civilized  of  coun 
tries  ;  not  in  that  most  decorous  and  dignified  of  insti 
tutions,  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  America! 
I  study  with  care  the  passage  wherein  the  clergyman 
appears  as  controller  of  the  fate  of  crops.  I  note  a 
chastened  caution  of  phraseology;  the  church  will  not 
repeat  the  experience  of  the  sorcerer's  apprentice,  who  set 
the  demons  to  bringing  water,  and  then  could  not  make 
them  stop !  The  spell  invokes  "moderate  rain  and  show 
ers";  and  as  an  additional  precaution  there  is  a  counter- 
spell  against  "excessive  rains  and  floods" :  the  weather- 
faucet  being  thus  under  exact  control. 

I  turn  the  pages  of  this  "Book  of  Common  Prayer", 
and  note  the  remnants  of  magic  which  it  contains.  There 
are  not  many  of  the  emergencies  of  life  with  which  the 
priest  is  not  authorized  to  deal;  not  many  natural  phe 
nomena  for  which  he  may  not  claim  the  credit.  And  in 
case  anything  should  have  been  overlooked,  there  is  a 
blanket  order  upon  Providence:  "Graciously  hear  us, 
that  those  evils  which  the  craft  or  subtilty  of  the  devil 
or  man  worketh  against  us,  be  brought  to  nought!"  I 
am  reminded  of  the  idea  which  haunted  my  childhood, 
reading  fairy-stories  about  the  hero  who  was  allowed 
three  wishes  that  would  come  true.  I  could  never  under 
stand  why  the  hero  did  not  settle  the  matter  once  for 
all — by  wishing  that  everything  he  wished  might  come 
true! 

Most  of  these  incantations  are  harmless,  and  some  are 
amiable ;  but  now  and  then  you  come  upon  one  which  is 
sinister  in  its  implications.  The  volume  before  me  hap 
pens  to  be  of  the  Church  of  England,  which  is  even  more 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  49 

forthright  in  its  confronting  of  the  Great  Magic.  Many 
years  ago  I  remember  talking  with  an  English  army  of 
ficer,  asking  how  he  could  feel  sure  of  his  soldiers  in  case 
of  labor  strikes ;  did  it  never  occur  to  him  that  the  men 
had  relatives  among  the  workers,  and  might  some  time 
refuse  to  shoot  them?  His  answer  was  that  he  was 
aware  of  it,  the  military  had  worked  out  its  technique  with 
care.  He  would  never  think  of  ordering  his  men  to  fire 
upon  a  mob  in  cold  blood;  he  would  first  start  the  spell 
of  discipline  to  work,  he  would  march  them  round  the 
block,  and  get  them  in  the  swing,  get  their  blood  mov 
ing  to  military  music;  then,  when  he  gave  the  order,  in 
they  would  go.  I  have  never  forgotten  the  gesture,  the 
animation  with  which  he  illustrated  their  going — I  could 
hear  the  grunting  of  bayonets  in  the  flesh  of  men.  The 
social  system  prevailing  in  England  has  made  necessary 
the  perfecting  of  such  military  technique;  also,  you  dis 
cover,  English  piety  has  made  necessary  the  providing  of 
a  religious  sanction  for  it.  After  the  job  has  been  done 
and  the  bayonets  have  been  wiped  clean,  the  company  is 
marched  to  church,  and  the  officer  kneels  in  his  family 
pew,  and  the  privates  kneel  with  the  parlor-maids,  and 
the  clergyman  raises  his  hands  to  heaven  and  intones: 
"We  bless  thy  Holy  Name,  that  it  hath  pleased  Thee  to 
appease  the  seditious  tumults  which  have  been  lately 
raised  up  among  us !" 

And  sometimes  the  clergyman  does  more  than  bless 
the  killers — he  even  takes  part  in  their  bloody  work.  In 
the  Home  Office  Records  of  the  British  Government  I 
read  (vol  40,  page  17)  how  certain  miners  were  on  strike 
against  low  wages  and  the  "truck"  system,  and  the  Vicar 
of  Abergavenny  put  himself  at  the  head  of  the  yeomanry 


50  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

and  the  Greys.  He  wrote  the  Home  Office  a  lively  ac 
count  of  his  military  operations.  All  that  remained  was 
to  apprehend  certain  of  the  strikers,  "and  then  I  shall  be 
able  to  return  to  my  Clerical  duties."  Later  he  wrote  of 
the  "sinister  influences"  which  kept  the  miners  from  re 
turning  to  their  work,  and  how  he  had  put  half  a  dozen 
of  the  most  obstinate  in  prison. 

The  Babylonian  Fire-god 

So  we  come  to  the  most  important  of  the  functions  of 
the  tribal  god,  as  an  ally  in  war,  an  inspirer  to  martial 
valour.  When  in  ancient  Babylonia  you  wished  to  over 
come  your  enemies,  you  went  to  the  shrine  of  the  Fire- 
god,  and  with  awful  rites  the  priest  pronounced  incan 
tations,  which  have  been  preserved  on  bricks  and  handed 
down  for  the  use  of  modern  churches.  "Pronounce  in  a 
whisper,  and  have  a  bronze  image  therewith,"  commands 
the  ancient  text,  and  runs  on  for  many  strophes  in  this 
fashion : 

Let  them  die,  but  let  me  live! 

Let  them  be  put  under  a  ban,  but  let  me  prosper! 
Let  them  perish,  but  let  me  increase! 
Let  them  become  weak,  but  let  me  wax  strong! 
O,  fire-god,  mighty,  exalteJ  among  the  gods, 
Thou  art  the  god,  thou  art  my  lord,  etc. 
This  was  in  heathen  Babylon,  some  three  thousand 
years  ago.    Since  then,  the  world  has  moved  on — 
Three  thousand  years  of  war  and  peace  and  glory, 

Of  hope  and  work  and  deeds  and  golden  schemes, 
Of  mighty  voices  raised  in  song  and  story, 
Of  huge  inventions  and  of  splendid  dreams — 

And  in  one  of  the  world's  leading  nations  the  people 
stand  up  and  bare  their  heads,  and  sing  to  their  god  to 
save  their  king  and  punish  those  who  oppose  him — 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  51 

O  Lord  our  God,  arise, 
Scatter  his  enemies, 

And  make  them  fall; 
Confound  their  politics, 
Frustrate  their  knavish  tricks, 
On  him  our  hopes  we  fix, 

God  save  us  all. 

Recently,  I  understand,  it  has  become  the  custom  to 
omit  this  stanza  from  the  English  national  anthem;  but 
it  is  clear  that  this  is  because  of  its  crudity  of  expression, 
not  because  of  objection  to  the  idea  of  praying  to  a  god 
to  assist  one  nation  and  injure  others ;  for  the  same  sen 
timent  is  expressed  again  and  again  in  the  most  care 
fully  edited  of  prayer-books: 

Abate   their   pride,   assuage    their   malice,   and   confound   their 

devices. 

Defend  us,  Thy  humble  servants,  in  all  assaults  of  our  enemies. 
Strengthen  him  (the  King)  that  he  may  vanquish  and  overcome 

all  his  enemies. 
There  is  none  other  that  fighteth  for  us,  but  only  Thou,  O  God. 

Prayers  such  as  these  are  pronounced  in  every  so- 
called  civilized  nation  today.  Behind  every  battle-line 
in  Europe  you  may  see  the  priests  of  the  Babylonian  Fire- 
god  with  their  bronze  images  and  their  ancient  incanta 
tions;  you  may  see  magic  spells  being  wrought,  magic 
standards  sanctified,  magic  bread  eaten  and  magic  wine 
drunk,  fetishes  blessed  and  hoodoos  lifted,  eternity  ran 
sacked  to  find  means  of  inciting  soldiers  to  the  mood 
where  they  will  "go  in".  Throughout  all  civilization,  the 
phobias  and  manias  of  war  have  thrown  the  people  back 
into  the  toils  of  the  priest,  and  that  church  which  forced 
Galileo  to  recant  under  threat  of  torture,  and  had  Ferrer 
shot  beneath  the  walls  of  the  fortress  of  Montjuich,  is 
rejoicing  in  a  "rebirth  of  religion". 


52  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

The  Medicine-men 

Andrew  D.  White  tells  us  that 

It  was  noted  that  in  the  14th  century,  after  the  great  plague, 
the  Black  Death,  had  passed,  an  immensely  increased  propor 
tion  of  the  landed  and  personal  property  of  every  European 
country  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Church.  Well  did  a  great  ec- 
lesiastic  remark  that  "pestilences  are  the  harvests  of  the  min 
isters  of  God." 

And  so  naturally  the  clergy  hold  on  to  their  preroga 
tive  as  banishers  of  epidemics.  Who  knows  what  day 
the  Lord  may  see  fit  to  rebuke  the  upstart  teachers  of 
impious  and  atheistical  inoculation,  and  scourge  the  peo 
ple  back  into  His  fold  as  in  the  good  old  days  of  Moses 
and  Aaron  ?  Viscount  Amberley,  in  his  immensely  learned 
and  half-suppressed  work,  "The  Analysis  of  Religious  Be 
lief",  quotes  some  missionaries  to  the  Fiji  islanders,  con 
cerning  the  ideas  of  these  benighted  heathen  on  the  sub 
ject  of  a  pestilence.  It  was  the  work  of  a  "disease- 
maker",  who  was  burning  images  of  the  people  with  in 
cantations;  so  they  blew  horns  to  frighten  this  disease- 
maker  from  his  spells.  The  missionaries  undertook  to 
explain  the  true  cause  of  the  affliction — and  thereby  re 
vealed  that  they  stood  upon  the  same  intellectual  level 
as  the  heathen  they  were  supposed  to  instruct!  It  ap 
peared  that  the  natives  had  been  at  war  with  their  neigh 
bors,  and  the  missionaries  had  commanded  them  to  de 
sist;  they  had  refused  to  obey,  and  God  had  sent  the 
epidemic  as  punishment  for  savage  presumption! 

And  on  precisely  this  same  Fijian  level  stands  the 
"Book  of  Common  Prayer"  of  our  most  decorous  and  cul 
tured  of  churches.  I  remember  as  a  little  child  lying  on 
a  bed  of  sickness,  occasioned  by  the  prevalence  in  our 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  53 

home  of  the  Southern  custom  of  hot  bread  three  times  a 
day;  and  there  came  an  amiable  clerical  gentleman  and 
recited  the  service  proper  to  such  pastoral  calls:  "Take 
therefore  in  good  part  the  visitation  of  the  Lord !"  And 
again,  when  my  mother  was  ill,  I  remember  how  the 
clergyman  read  out  in  church  a  prayer  for  her,  specify 
ing  all  sickness,  "in  mind,  body  or  estate".  I  was  think 
ing  only  of  my  mother,  and  the  meaning  of  these  words 
passed  over  my  childish  head;  I  did  not  realize  that  the 
elderly  plutocrat  in  black  broadcloth  who  knelt  in  the 
pew  in  front  of  me  was  invoking  the  aid  of  the  Almighty 
so  that  his  tenements  might  bring  in  their  rentals  prompt 
ly;  so  that  his  little  "flyer"  in  cotton  might  prove  suc 
cessful  ;  so  that  the  children  in  his  mills  might  work  with 
greater  speed. 

Somebody  asked  Voltaire  if  you  could  kill  a  cow  by 
incantations,  and  he  answered,  "Yes,  if  you  use  a  little 
strychnine  with  it."  And  that  would  seem  to  be  the  at 
titude  of  the  present-day  Anglican  church-member;  he 
calls  in  the  best  physician  he  knows,  he  makes  sure  that 
his  plumbing  is  sound,  and  after  that  he  thinks  it  can  do 
no  harm  to  let  the  Lord  have  a  chance.  It  makes  the 
women  happy,  and  after  all,  there  are  a  lot  of  things  we 
don't  yet  know  about  the  world.  So  he  repairs  to  the 
family  pew,  and  recites  over  the  venerable  prayers,  and 
contributes  his  mite  to  the  maintenance  of  an  institu 
tion  which,  fourteen  Sundays  every  year,  proclaims  the 
terrifying  menaces  of  the  Athanasian  Creed : 

Whoever  will  be  saved,  before  all  things  it  is  necessary  that 
he  hold  the  Catholick  faith.  Which  faith,  except  one  do  keep 
whole  and  undefiled;  without  doubt  he  shall  perish  everlast 
ingly. 

For  the  benefit  of  the  uninitiated  reader,  it  may  be 


54  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

explained  that  the  "Catholick  faith"  here  referred  to  is  not 
the  Roman  Catholic,  but  that  of  the  Church  of  England 
and  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  America.  This 
creed  of  the  ancient  Alexandrian  lays  down  the  truth  with 
grim  and  menacing  precision — forty-four  paragraphs  of 
metaphysical  minutiae,  closing  with  the  final  doom: 
"This  is  the  Catholick  faith :  which  except  a  man  believe 
faithfully,  he  cannot  be  saved." 

You  see,  the  founders  of  this  august  institution  were 
not  content  with  cultured  complacency;  what  they  be 
lieved  they  believed  really,  with  their  whole  hearts,  and 
they  were  ready  to  act  upon  it,  even  if  it  meant  burning 
their  own  at  the  stake.  Also,  they  knew  the  ceaseless 
impulse  of  the  mind  to  grow;  the  terrible  temptation 
which  confronts  each  new  generation  to  believe  that 
which  is  reasonable.  They  met  the  situation  by  setting 
out  the  true  faith  in  words  which  no  one  could  mistake. 
They  have  provided,  not  merely  the  Creed  of  Athanasius, 
but  also  the  "Thirty-nine  Articles" — which  are  thirty- 
nine  separate  and  binding  guarantees  that  one  who  holds 
orders  in  the  Episcopal  Church  shall  be  either  a  man  of 
inferior  mentality,  or  else  a  sophist  and  hypocrite.  How 
desperate  some  of  them  have  become  in  the  face  of  this 
cruel  dilemma  is  illustrated  by  the  tale  which  is  told  of 
Dr.  Jowett,  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford :  that  when  he  was 
required  to  recite  the  "Apostle's  Creed"  in  public,  he 
would  save  himself  by  inserting  the  words  "used  to"  be 
tween  the  words  "I  believe",  saying  the  inserted  words 
under  his  breath,  thus,  "I  used  to  believe  in  the  Father, 
the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost."  Perhaps  the  eminent  di 
vine  never  did  this ;  but  the  fact  that  his  students  told  it, 
and  thought  it  funny,  is  sufficient  indication  of  their  at- 


THE  PEOFITS  OF  RELIGION  55 

titude  toward  their  "Religion."  The  son  of  William 
George  Ward  tells  in  his  biography  how  this  leader  of 
the  "Tractarian  Movement"  met  the  problem  with 
cynicism  which  seems  almost  sublime:  "Make  yourself 
clear  that  you  are  justified  in  deception;  and  then  lie  like 
a  trooper!" 

The  Canonization  of  Incompetence 

The  supreme  crime  of  the  church  to-day  is  that  every 
where  and  in  all  its  operations  and  influences  it  is  on  the 
side  of  sloth  of  mind ;  that  it  banishes  brains,  it  sanctifies 
stupidity,  it  canonizes  incompetence.  Consider  the  power 
of  the  Church  of  England  and  its  favorite  daughter  here 
in  America ;  consider  their  prestige  with  the  press  and  in 
politics,  their  hold  upon  Hterature  and  the  arts,  their  con 
trol  of  education  and  the  minds  of  children,  of  charity 
and  the  lives  of  the  poor:  consider  all  this,  and  then  say 
what  it  means  to  society  that  such  a  power  must  be,  in 
every  new  issue  that  arises,  on  the  side  of  reaction  and 
falsehood.  "So  it  was  in  the  beginning,  is  now,  and  ever 
shall  be,"  runs  the  church's  formula ;  and  this  per  se  and 
a  priori,  of  necessity  and  in  the  nature  of  the  case. 

Turn  over  the  pages  of  history  and  read  the  damning 
record  of  the  church's  opposition  to  every  advance  in 
every  field  of  science,  even  the  most  remote  from  theo 
logical  concern.  Here  is  the  Reverend  Edward  Massey, 
preaching  in  1772  on  "The  Dangerous  and  Sinful  Prac 
tice  of  Inoculation" ;  declaring  that  Job's  distemper  was 
probably  confluent  small-pox ;  that  he  had  been  inoculated 
doubtless  by  the  devil;  that  diseases  are  sent  by  Provi 
dence  for  the  punishment  of  sin;  and  that  the  proposed 
attempt  to  prevent  them  is  "a  diabolical  operation".  Here 


56  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

are  the  Scotch  clergy  of  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  denouncing  the  use  of  chloroform  in  obstetrics, 
because  it  is  seeking  "to  avoid  one  part  of  the  primeval 
curse  on  woman".  Here  is  Bishop  Wilberforce  of  Ox 
ford  anathematizing  Darwin:  "The  principle  of  natural 
selection  is  absolutely  incompatible  with  the  word  of 
God" ;  it  "contradicts  the  revealed  relation  of  creation  to 
its  creator";  it  "is  inconsistent  with  the  fulness  of  His 
glory";  it  is  "a  dishonoring  view  of  nature".  And  the 
Bishop  settled  the  matter  by  asking  Huxley  whether  he 
was  descended  from  an  ape  through  his  grandmother  or 
grandfather. 

Think  what  it  means,  friends  of  progress,  that  these 
ecclesiastical  figures  should  be  set  up  for  the  reverence  of 
the  populace,  and  that  every  time  mankind  is  to  make  an 
advance  in  power  over  Nature,  the  pioneers  of  thought 
have  to  come  with  crow-bars  and  derricks  and  heave 
these  figures  out  of  the  way !  And  you  think  that  condi 
tions  are  changed  to-day?  But  consider  syphilis  and 
gonorrhea,  about  which  we  know  so  much,  and  can  do 
almost  nothing;  consider  birth-control,  which  we  are  sent 
to  jail  for  so  much  as  mentioning!  Consider  the  divorce 
reforms  for  which  the  world  is  crying — and  for  which  it 
must  wait,  because  of  St.  Paul !  Realize  that  up  to  date 
it  has  proven  impossible  to  persuade  the  English  Church 
to  permit  a  man  to  marry  his  deceased  wife's  sister! 
That  when  the  war  broke  upon  England  the  whole  nation 
was  occupied  with  a  squabble  over  the  disestablishment 
of  the  church  of  Wales!  Only  since  1888  has  it  been 
legally  possible  for  an  unbeliever  to  hold  a  seat  in  Parlia 
ment;  while  up  to  the  present  day  men  are  tried  for 
blasphemy  and  convicted  under  the  decisions  of  Lord 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  57 

Hale,  to  the  effect  that  "it  is  a  crime  either  to  deny  the 
truth  of  the  fundamental  -doctrines  of  the  Christian  re 
ligion  or  to  hold  them  up  to  contempt  or  ridicule."  Said 
Mr.  Justice  Horridge,  at  the  West  Riding  Assizes,  1911 : 
"A  man  is  not  free  in  any  public  place  to  use  common 
ridicule  on  subjects  which  are  sacred." 

The  purpose,  as  outlined  by  the  public  prosecutor  in 
London,  is  "to  preserve  the  standard  of  outward  dec 
ency."  And  you  will  find  that  the  one  essential  to  prose 
cution  is  always  that  the  victim  shall  be  obscure  and 
helpless ;  never  by  any  chance  is  he  a  duke  in  a  drawing- 
room.  I  will  record  an  utterance  of  one  of  the  obscure 
victims  of  the  British  "standard  of  outward  decency",  a 
teacher  of  mathematics  named  Holyoake,  who  presumed 
to  discuss  in  a  public  hall  the  starvation  of  the  working 
classes  of  the  country.  A  preacher  objected  that  he  had 
discussed  "our  duty  to  our  neighbor"  and  neglected  "our 
duty  to  God" ;  whereupon  the  lecturer  replied :  "Our  na 
tional  Church  and  general  religious  institutions  cost  us, 
upon  accredited  computation,  about  twenty  million 
pounds  annually.  Worship  being  thus  expensive,  I  ap 
peal  to  your  heads  and  your  pockets  whether  we  are  not 
too  poor  to  have  a  God.  While  our  distress  lasts,  I  think 
it  would  be  wise  to  put  deity  upon  half  pay."  And  for 
that  utterance  the  unfortunate  teacher  of  mathematics 
served  six  months  in  the  common  Gaol  at  Gloucester! 

While  men  were  being  tried  for  publishing  the  "Free 
thinker",  the  Premier  of  England  was  William  Ewart 
Gladstone.  And  if  you  wish  to  know  what  an  established 
church  can  do  by  way  of  setting  up  dullness  in  high 
places,  get  a  volume  of  this  "Grand  Old  Man's"  writings 
on  theological  and  religious  questions.  Read  his  "Juven- 


58  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

tus  Mundi",  in  the  course  of  which  he  establishes  a  mys 
tic  connection  between  the  trident  of  Neptune  and  the 
Christian  Trinity!  Read  his  efforts  to  prove  that  the 
writer  of  Genesis  was  an  inspired  geologist !  This  writer 
of  Genesis  points  out  in  Nature  "a  grand,  fourfold  di 
vision,  set  forth  in  an  orderly  succession  of  times :  First, 
the  water  population ;  secondly,  the  air  population :  third 
ly,  the  land  population  of  animals ;  fourthly,  the  land  pop 
ulation  consummated  in  man."  And  it  seems  that  this 
division  and  sequence  "is  understood  to  have  been  so  ar- 
firmed  in  our  time  by  natural  science  that  it  may  be  taken 
as  a  demonstrated  conclusion  and  established  fact." 
Hence  we  must  conclude  of  the  writer  of  Genesis  that 
"his  knowledge  was  divine"!  Consider  that  this  was 
actually  published  in  one  of  the  leading  British  month- 
Kes,  and  that  it  was  necessary  for  Professor  Huxley  to 
answer  it,  pointing  out  that  so  far  is  it  from  being  true 
that  "a  fourfold  division  and  orderly  sequence"  of  water, 
air  and  land  animals  "has  been  affirmed  in  our  time  by 
natural  science",  that  on  the  contrary,  the  assertion  is 
"directly  contradictory  to  facts  known  to  everyone  who 
is  acquainted  with  the  elements  of  natural  science".  The 
distribution  of  fossils  proves  that  land  animals  originated 
before  sea-animals,  and  there  has  been  such  a  mixing  of 
land,  sea  and  air  animals  as  utterly  to  destroy  the  reputa 
tion  of  both  Genesis  and  Gladstone  as  possessing  a  di 
vine  knowledge  of  Geology. 

Gibson's  Preservative 

I  have  a  friend,  a  well-known  "scholar",  who  permits 
me  the  use  of  his  extensive  library.  I  stand  in  the  middle 
and  look  about  me,  and  see  in  the  dim  shadows  walls 
lined  from  floor  to  ceiling  with  decorous  and  grave-look- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  59 

ing  books,  bound  for  the  most  part  in  black,  many  of 
them  fading  to  green  with  age.  There  are  literally  thou 
sands  of  such,  and  their  theme  is  the  pseudo-science  of 
"divinity".  I  close  my  eyes,  to  make  the  test  fair,  and 
walk  to  the  shelves  and  put  out  my  hand  and  take  a  book. 
It  proves  to  be  a  modern  work,  "A  History  of  the  Eng 
lish  Prayer-book  in  Relation  to  the  Doctrine  of  the 
Eucharist".  I  turn  the  pages  and  discover  that  it  is  a 
study  of  the  variations  of  one  minute  detail  of  church 
doctrine.  This  learned  divine — he  has  written  many  such 
works,  as  the  advertisements  inform  us — fills  up  the 
greater  part  of  his  pages  with  foot-notes  from  hundreds 
of  authorities,  arguments  and  counter-arguments  over 
supernatural  subtleties.  I  will  give  one  sample  of  these 
footnotes — asking  the  reader  to  be  patient : 

I  add  the  following  valuable  observation,  of  Dean  Goode: 
("On  Eucharist",  II  p  757.  See  also  Archbishop  Ware  in  Gib 
son's  "Preservative",  vol  X,  Chap  II)  "One  great  point  for  which 
our  divines  have  contended,  in  opposition  to  Romish  errors,  has 
been  the  reality  of  that  presence  of  Christ's  Body  and  Blood  to 
the  soul  of  the  believer  which  is  affected  through  the  operation 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  notwithstanding  the  absence  of  that  Body 
and  Blood  in  Heaven.  Like  the  Sun,  the  Body  of  Christ  is  both 
present  and  absent;  present,  really  and  truly  present,  in  one 
sense — that  is,  by  the  soul  being  brought  into  immediate  com 
munion  with — but  absent  in  another  sense — that  is,  as  regards 
the  contiguity  of  its  substance  to  our  bodies.  The  authors  under 
review,  like  the  Romanists,  maintain  that  this  is  not  a  Real 
Presence,  and  assuming  their  own  interpretation  of  the  phrase 
to  be  the  only  true  one,  press  into  their  service  the  testimony 
of  divines  who,  though  using  the  phrase,  apply  it  in  a  sense  the 
reverse  of  theirs.  The  ambiguity  of  the  phrase,  and  its  mis 
application  by  the  Church  of  Rome,  have  induced  many  of  our 
divines  to  repudiate  it,  etc." 

Realize  that  of  the  work  from  which  this  "valuable 


60  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

observation"  is  quoted,  there  are  at  least  two  volumes,  the 
second  volume  containing  not  less  than  757  pages  1 
Realize  that  in  Gibson's  "Preservative"  there  are  not 
less  than  ten  volumes  of  such  writing!  Realize  that  in 
this  twentieth  century  a  considerable  portion  of  the  men 
tal  energies  of  the  world's  greatest  empire  is  devoted  to 
that  kind  of  learning! 

I  turn  to  the  date  upon  the  volume,  and  find  that  it  is 
1910.  I  was  in  England  within  a  year  of  that  time,  and 
so  I  can  tell  what  was  the  condition  of  the  English  people 
while  printers  were  making  and  papers  were  reviewing 
and  book-stores  were  distributing  this  work  of  ecclesias 
tical  research.  I  walked  along  the  Embankment  and  saw 
the  pitiful  wretches,  men,  women  and  sometimes  children, 
clad  in  filthy  rags,  starved  white  and  frozen  blue,  soaked 
in  winter  rains  and  shivering  in  winter  winds,  homeless, 
hopeless,  unheeded  by  the  doctors  of  divinity,  unpre- 
served  by  Gibson's  "Preservative".  I  walked  on  Hamp- 
stead  Heath  on  Easter  day,  when  the  population  of  the 
slums  turns  out  for  its  one  holiday;  I  walked,  literally 
trembling  with  horror,  for  I  had  never  seen  such  sights 
nor  dreamed  of  them.  These  creatures  were  hardly  to  be 
recognized  as  human  beings;  they  were  some  new  gro 
tesque  race  of  apes.  They  could  not  walk,  they  could 
only  shamble ;  they  could  not  laugh,  they  could  only  leer. 
I  saw  a  hand-organ  playing,  and  turned  away — the 
things  they  did  in  their  efforts  to  dance  were  not  to  be 
watched.  And  then  I  went  out  into  the  beautiful  English 
country;  cultured  and  charming  ladies  took  me  in  swift, 
smooth  motor-cars,  and  I  saw  the  pitiful  hovels  and  the 
drink-sodden,  starch-poisoned  inhabitants — slum-popula 
tions  everywhere,  even  on  the  land!  When  the  news- 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  61 

paper  reporters  came  to  me,  I  said  that  I  had  just  come 
from  Germany,  and  that  if  ever  England  found  herself  at 
war  with  that  country,  she  would  regret  that  she  had  let 
the  bodies  and  the  minds  of  her  people  rot ;  for  which  ex 
pression  I  was  severely  taken  to  task  by  more  than  one 
British  divine. 

The  bodies — and  the  minds ;  the  rot  of  the  latter  being 
the  cause  of  the  former.  All  over  England  in  that  year 
of  1910,  in  thousands  of  schools,  rich  and  poor,  and  in  the 
greatest  centres  of  learning,  men  like  Dean  Goode  were 
teaching  boys  dead  languages  and  dead  sciences  and  dead 
arts;  sending  them  out  to  life  with  no  more  conception 
of  the  modern  world  than  a  monk  of  the  Middle  Ages; 
sending  them  out  with  minds  made  hard  and  inflexible, 
ignorant  of  science,  indifferent  to  progress,  contemptuous 
of  ideas.  And  then  suddenly,  almost  overnight,  this  ter 
rified  people  finds  itself  at  war  with  a  nation  ruled  and 
disciplined  by  modern  experts,  scientists  and  technicians. 
The  awful  muddle  that  was  in  England  during  the  first 
two  years  of  the  war  has  not  yet  been  told  in  print ;  but 
thousands  know  it,  and  some  day  it  will  be  written,  and 
it  will  finish  forever  the  prestige  of  the  British  ruling 
caste.  They  rushed  off  an  expedition  to  Gallipoli,  and 
somebody  forgot  the  water-supply,  and  at  one  time  they 
had  ninety-five  thousand  cases  of  dysentery ! 

They  always  "muddle  through",  they  tell  you ;  that  is 
the  motto  of  their  ruling  caste.  But  this  time  they  did  not 
"muddle  through" — they  had  to  come  to  America  for 
help.  As  I  write,  our  Congress  is  voting  billions  and  tens 
of  billions  of  dollars,  and  a  million  of  the  best  of  our 
young  manhood  are  being  taken  from  their  homes — be 
cause  in  1910  the  mind  of  England  was  occupied  with 


62  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

Dean  Goode  "On  Eucharist",  and  the  ten  volumes  of  Gib 
son's  "Preservative". 

The  Elders 

What  the  Church  means  in  human  affairs  is  the  rule  of 
the  aged.  It  means  old  men  in  the  seats  of  authority,  not 
merely  in  the  church,  but  in  the  law-courts  and  in  Parlia 
ment,  even  in  the  army  and  navy.  For  a  test  I  look  up 
the  list  of  bishops  of  the  Church  of  England  in  Whitaker's 
Almanac ;  it  appears  that  there  are  40  of  these  function 
aries,  including  the  archbishops,  but  not  the  suffragans ; 
and  that  the  total  salary  paid  to  them  amounts  to  more 
than  nine  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year.  This,  it  should 
be  understood,  does  not  include  the  pay  of  their  as 
sistants,  nor  the  cost  of  maintaining  their  religious  estab 
lishments  ;  it  does  not  include  any  private  incomes  which 
they  or  their  wives  may  possess,  as  members  of  the  priv 
ileged  classes  of  the  Empire.  I  look  up  their  ages  in 
Who's  Who,  and  I  find  that  there  is  only  one  below 
fifty-three;  the  oldest  of  them  is  ninety-one,  while  the 
average  age  of  the  goodly  company  is  seventy.  There 
have  been  men  in  history  who  have  retained  their  flexi 
bility  of  mind,  their  ability  to  adjust  themselves  to  new 
circumstances  at  the  age  of  seventy,  but  it  will  always 
be  found  that  these  men  were  trained  in  science  and 
practical  affairs,  never  in  dead  languages  and  theology. 
One  of  the  oldest  of  the  English  prelates,  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  recently  stated  to  a  newspaper  reporter 
that  he  worked  seventeen  hours  a  day,  and  had  no  time 
to  lorm  an  opinion  on  the  labor  question. 

And  now — here  is  the  crux  of  the  argument — do  these 
aged  gentlemen  rule  of  their  own  power?  They  do  not! 
They  do  literally  nothing  of  their  own  power ;  they  could 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  63 

not  make  their  own  episcopal  robes,  they  could  net 
even  cook  their  own  episcopal  dinners.  They  have  to  be 
maintained  in  all  their  comings  and  goings.  Who  sup 
ports  them,  and  to  what  end? 

The  roots  of  the  English  Church  are  in  the  English 
land  system,  which  is  one  of  the  infamies  of  the  modern 
world.  It  dates  from  the  days  of  William  the  Norman, 
who  took  possession  of  Britain  with  his  sword,  and  in 
order  to  keep  possession  for  himself  and  his  heirs,  dis 
tributed  the  land  among  his  nobles  and  prelates.  In 
those  days,  you  understand,  a  high  ecclesiastic  was  a  man 
of  war,  who  did  not  stoop  to  veil  his  predatory  nature 
under  pretense  of  philanthropy;  the  abbots  and  arch 
bishops  of  William  wore  armor  and  had  their  troops  of 
knights  like  the  barons  and  the  dukes.  William  gave 
them  vast  tracts,  and  at  the  same  time  he  gave  them 
orders  which  they  obeyed.  Says  the  English  chronicler, 
"Stark  he  was.  Bishops  he  stripped  of  their  bishopricks, 
abbots  of  their  abbacies".  Green  tells  us  that  "the  de 
pendence  of  the  church  on  the  royal  power  was  strictly 
enforced.  Homage  was  exacted  from  bishop  as  from 
baron."  And  what  was  this  homage?  The  bishop 
knelt  before  William,  bareheaded  and  without  arms,  and 
swore :  "Hear  my  lord,  I  become  liege  man  of  yours  for 
life  and  limb  and  earthly  regard,  and  I  will  keep  faith 
and  loyalty  to  you  for  life  and  death,  God  help  me." 

The  lands  which  the  church  got  from  William  the 
Norman,  she  has  held,  and  always  on  the  same  condition 
— that  she  shall  be  "liege  man  for  life  and  limb  and 
earthly  regard".  In  this  you  have  the  whole  story  of 
the  church  of  England,  in  the  twentieth  century  as  in  the 
eleventh.  The  balance  of  power  has  shifted  from  time 


64  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

to  time ;  eld  families  have  lost  the  land  and  new  families 
have  gotten  it ;  but  the  loyalty  and  homage  of  the  church 
have  been  held  by  the  land,  as  the  needle  of  the  compass 
is  held  by  a  mass  of  metal.  Some  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ago  a  popular  song  gave  the  general  impression — 

For  this  is  law  that  I'll  maintain 

Until  ray  dying  day,  sir: 
That  whatsoever  king  shall  reign 

I'll  still  be  vicar  of  Bray,  sir! 

So,  wherever  you  take  the  Anglican  clergy,  they  are 
Tories  and  Royalists,  conservatives  and  reactionaries, 
friends  of  every  injustice  that  profits  the  owning  class. 
And  always  among  themselves  you  find  them  intriguing 
and  squabbling  over  the  dividing  of  the  spoils;  always 
you  find  them  enjoying  leisure  and  ease,  while  the  peo 
ple  suffer  and  the  rebels  complain.  One  can  pass  down 
the  corridor  of  English  history  and  prove  this  statement 
by  the  words  of  Englishmen  from  every  single  genera 
tion.  Take  the  fourteenth  century;  the  "Good  Parlia 
ment"  declares  that 

Unworthy  and  unlearned  caitiffs  are  appointed  to  benefices 
of  a  thousand  marks,  while  the  poor  and  learned  hardly  ob 
tain  one  of  twenty.  God  gave  the  sheep  to  be  pastured,  not  to 
be  shaven  and  shorn. 

And  a  little  later  comes  the  poet  of  the  people,  Piers 
Plowman — 

But  now  is  Religion  a  rider,  a  roamer  through  the  streets, 

A  leader  at  the  love-day,  a  buyer  of  the  land, 

Pricking  on  a  palfrey  from  manor  to  manor, 

A  heap  of  hounds  at  his  back,  as  tho  he  were  a  lord; 

And  if  his  servant  kneel  not  when  he  brings  his  cup, 

He  loureth  on  him  asking  who  taught  him  courtesy. 

Badly  have  lords  done  to  give  their  heirs'  lands 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  65 

Away  to  the  Orders  that  have  no  pity; 

Money  rains  upon  their  altars. 

There  where  such  parsons  be  living  at  ease 

They  have  no  pity  on  the  poor;  that  is  their  "charity". 

Ye  hold  you  as  lords;  your  lands  are  too  broad, 

But  there  shall  come  a  king  and  he  shall  shrive  you  all 

And  beat  you  as  the  bible  saith  for  breaking  of  your  Rule. 

Another  step  through  history,  and  in  the  early  part 
of  the  sixteenth  century  here  is  Simon  Fish,  addressing 
King  Henry  the  Eighth,  in  the  "Supplicacyon  for  the 
Beggars",  complaining  of  the  "strong,  puissant  and  coun 
terfeit  holy  and  ydell"  which  "are  now  increased  under 
your  sight,  not  only  into  a  great  nombre,  but  ynto  a 
kingdome." 

They  have  begged  so  importunatly  that  they  have  gotten 
ynto  their  hondes  more  than  a  therd  part  of  all  youre  Realme. 
The  goodliest  lordshippes,  maners,  londes,  and  territories,  are 
theyres.  Besides  this,  they  have  the  tenth  part  of  all  the 
corne,  medowe,  pasture,  grasse,  wolle,  coltes,  calves,  lambes, 
pigges,  gese  and  chikens.  Ye,  and  they  looke  so  narowly  uppon 
theyre  proufittes,  that  the  poore  wyves  must  be  countable  to 
thym  of  every  tenth  eg,  or  elles  she  gettith  not  her  rytes  at 
ester,  shal  be  taken  as  an  heretike.  .  .  .  Is  it  any  merveille 
that  youre  people  so  compleine  of  povertie?  The  Turke  nowe, 
in  your  tyme,  shulde  never  be  abill  to  get  so  moche  grounde  of 
ehristendome  .  .  .  And  whate  do  al  these  gredy  sort  of 
sturdy,  idell,  holy  theves?  These  be  they  that  have  made  an 
hundredth  thousand  idell  hores  in  your  realme.  These  be  they 
that  catche  the  pokkes  oi  one  woman,  and  bere  them  to  an 
other. 

The  petitioner  goes  on  to  tell  how  they  steal  wives 
and  all  their  goods  with  them,  and  if  any  man  protest 
they  make  him  a  heretic,  "so  that  it  maketh  him  wisshe 
that  he  had  not  done  it".  Also  they  take  fortunes  for 
masses  and  then  don't  say  them.  "If  the  Abbot  of  west- 


66  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

minster  shulde  sing  every  day  as  many  masses  for  his 
founders  as  he  is  bounde  to  do  by  his  foundacion,  1000 
monkes  were  too  few."  The  petitioner  suggests  that  the 
king  shall  "tie  these  holy  idell  theves  to  the  cartes,  to  be 
whipped  naked  about  every  market  towne  till  they  will 
fall  to  laboure !" 

Church  History 

King  Henry  did  not  follow  this  suggestion  precisely, 
but  he  took  away  the  property  of  the  religious  orders  for 
the  expenses  of  his  many  wives  and  mistresses,  and  forced 
the  clergy  in  England  to  forswear  obedience  to  the  Pope 
and  make  his  royal  self  their  spiritual  head.  This  was 
the  beginning  of  the  Anglican  Church,  as  distinguished 
from  the  Catholic;  a  beginning  of  which  the  Anglican 
clergy  are  not  so  proud  as  they  would  like  to  be.  When 
I  was  a  boy,  they  taught  me  what  they  called  "church 
history",  and  when  they  came  to  Henry  the  Eighth  they 
used  him  as  an  illustration  of  the  fact  that  the  Lord  is 
sometimes  wont  to  choose  evil  men  to  carry  out  His 
righteous  purposes.  They  did  not  explain  why  the  Lord 
should  do  this  confusing  thing,  nor  just  how  you  were 
to  know,  when  you  saw  something  being  done  by  a  mur 
derous  adulterer,  whether  it  was  the  will  of  the  Lord 
or  of  Satan;  nor  did  they  go  into  details  as  to  the  mo 
tives  which  the  Lord  had  been  at  pains  to  provide,  so  as 
to  induce  his  royal  agent  to  found  the  Anglican  Church. 
For  such  details  you  have  to  consult  another  set  of  au 
thorities — the  victims  of  the  plundering. 

When  I  was  in  college  my  professor  of  Latin  was  a 
gentleman  with  bushy  brown  whiskers  and  a  thundering 
voice  of  which  I  was  often  the  object — for  even  in  those 
early  days  I  had  the  habit  of  persisting  in  embarrassing 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  67 

questions.  This  professor  was  a  devout  Catholic,  and 
not  even  in  dealing  with  ancient  Romans  could  he  re 
strain  his  propaganda  impulses.  Later  on  in  life  he  be 
came  editor  of  the  "Catholic  Encyclopedia",  and  now 
when  I  turn  its  pages,  I  imagine  that  I  see  the  bushy 
brown  whiskers,  and  hear  the  thundering  voice:  "Mr. 
Sinclair,  it  is  so  because  I  tell  you  it  is  so !" 

I  investigate,  and  find  that  my  ex-professor  knows  all 
about  King  Henry  the  Eighth,  and  his  motives  in  found 
ing  the  Church  of  England;  he  is  ready  with  an  "eco 
nomic  interpretation",  as  complete  as  the  most  rabid 
muckraker  could  desire !  It  appears  that  the  king  wanted 
a  new  wife,  and  demanded  that  the  Pope  should  grant 
the  necessary  permission;  in  his  efforts  to  browbeat  the 
Pope  into  such  betrayal  of  duty,  King  Henry  threatened 
the  withdrawal  of  the  "annates"  and  the  "Peter's  pence". 
Later  on  he  forced  the  clergy  to  declare  that  the  Pope 
was  "only  a  foreign  bishop",  and  in  order  to  "stamp  out 
overt  expression  of  disaffection,  he  embarked  upon  a  ver 
itable  reign  of  terror". 

In  Anglican  histories,  you  are  assured  that  all  this 
was  a  work  of  religious  reform,  and  that  after  it  the 
Church  was  the  pure  vehicle  of  God's  graqe.  There  were 
no  more  "holy  idell  theves",  holding  the  land  of  England 
and  plundering  the  poor.  But  get  to  know  the  clergy, 
and  see  things  from  the  inside,  and  you  will  meet  some 
one  like  the  Archbishop  of  Cashell,  who  wrote  to  one  of 
his  intimates: 

I  conclude  that  a  good  bishop  has  nothing  more  to  do  than 
to  eat,  drink  and  grow  fat,  rich  and  die;  which  laudable  ex 
ample  I  propose  for  the  remainder  of  my  days  to  follow. 

If  you  say  that  might  be  a  casual  jest,  hear  what 


68  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Thackeray  reports  of  that  period,  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  which  he  knew  with  peculiar  intimacy : 

I  read  that  Lady  Yarmouth  (my  most  religious  and  gracious 
King's  favorite)  sold  a  bishopric  to  a  clergyman  for  5000 
pounds.  (She  betted  him  the  5000  pounds  that  he  would  not 
be  made  a  bishop,  and  he  lost,  and  paid  her.)  Was  he  the  only 
prelate  of  his  time  led  up  by  such  hands  for  consecration?  As 
I  peep  into  George  IPs  St.  James,  I  see  crowds  of  cassocks 
pushing  up  the  back-stairs  of  the  ladies  of  the  court;  stealthy 
clergy  slipping  purses  into  their  laps;  that  godless  old  king 
yawning  under  his  canopy  in  his  Chapel  Royal,  as  the  chaplain 
before  him  is  discoursing.  Discoursing  about  what? — About 
righteousness  and  judgment?  Whilst  the  chaplain  is  preach 
ing,  the  king  is  chattering  in  German  and  almost  as  loud  as  the 
preacher;  so  loud  that  the  clergyman  actually  burst  out  crying 
in  his  pulpit,  because  the  defender  of  the  faith  and  the  dispenser 
of  bishoprics  would  not  listen  to  him! 

Land  and  Livings 

And  how  is  it  in  the  twentieth  century?  Have 
conditions  been  much  improved?  There  are  great  Eng 
lishmen  who  do  not  think  so.  I  quote  Robert  Buchanan, 
a  poet  who  spoke  for  the  people,  and  who  therefore  has 
still  to  be  recognized  by  English  critics.  He  writes  of 
the  "New  Rome",  by  which  he  means  present-day  Eng 
land: 

The  gods  are  dead,  but  in  their  name 
Humanity  is  sold  to  shame, 
While  (then  as  now!)  the  tinsel'd  priest 
Sitteth  with  robbers  at  the  feast, 
Blesses  the  laden,  blood-stained  board, 
Weaves  garlands  round  the  butcher's  sword, 
And  poureth  freely  (now  as  then) 
The  sacramental  blood  of  Men! 

You  see,  the  land  system  of  England  remains — the 
changes  having  been  for  the  worse.     William  the  Con- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  69 

queror  wanted  to  keep  the  Saxon  peasantry  contented,  so 
he  left  them  their  "commons" ;  but  in  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury  these  were  nearly  all  filched  away.  We  saw  the 
same  thing  done  within  the  last  generation  in  Mexico, 
and  from  the  same  motive — because  developing  capital 
ism  needs  cheap  labor,  whereas  people  who  have  access 
to  the  land  will  not  slave  in  mills  and  mines.  In  Eng 
land,  from  the  time  of  Queen  Anne  to  that  of  William 
and  Mary,  the  parliaments  of  the  landlords  passed  some 
four  thousand  separate  acts,  whereby  more  than  seven 
million  acres  of  the  common  land  were  stolen  from  the 
people.  It  has  been  calculated  that  these  acres  might 
have  supported  a  million  families;  and  ever  since  then 
England  has  had  to  feed  a  million  paupers  all  the  time. 
As  an  old  song  puts  the  matter: 

Why  prosecute  the  man  or  woman 

Who  steals  a  goose  from  off  the  common, 

And  let  the  greater  felon  loose 

Who  steals  the  common  from  the  goose? 

In  our  day  the  land  aristocracy  is  rooted  like  the  na 
tive  oak  in  British  soil :  some  of  them  direct  descendants 
of  the  Normans,  others  children  of  the  court  favorites 
and  panders  who  grew  rich  in  the  days  of  the  Tudors  and 
the  unspeakable  Stuarts.  Seven  men  own  practically  all 
the  land  of  the  city  and  county  of  London,  and  collect 
tribute  from  seven  millions  of  people.  The  estates  are 
entailed — that  is,  handed  down  from  father  to  oldest  son 
automatically ;  you  cannot  buy  any  land,  but  if  you  want 
to  build,  the  landlord  gives  you  a  lease,  and  when  the 
lease  is  up,  he  takes  possession  of  your  buildings.  The 
tribute  which  London  pays  is  more  than  a  hundred  mil- 
lion  dollars  a  year.  So  absolute  is  the  right  of  the  land- 


70  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

owner  that  he  can  sue  for  trespass  the  driver  on  an  aero 
plane  which  flies  over  him;  he  imposes  on  fishermen  a 
tax  upon  catches  made  many  hundred  of  yards  from  the 
shore. 

And  in  this  graft,  of  course,  the  church  has  its  share. 
Each  church  owns  land — not  merely  that  upon  which  it 
stands,  but  farms  and  city  lots  from  which  it  derives  in 
come.  Each  cathedral  owns  large  tracts;  so  do  the 
schools  and  universities  in  which  the  clergy  are  edu 
cated.  The  income  from  the  holdings  of  a  church  con 
stitutes  what  is  called  a  "living";  these  livings,  which 
vary  in  size,  are  the  prerogatives  of  the  younger  sons  of 
the  ruling  families,  and  are  intrigued  and  scrambled  for 
in  exactly  the  fashion  which  Thackeray  describes  in  the 
eighteenth  century. 

About  six  thousand  of  these  "livings'*  are  in  the  gift 
of  great  land  owners;  one  noble  lord  alone  disposes  of 
fifty-six  such  plums ;  and  needless  to  say,  he  does  not 
present  them  to  clergymen  who  favor  radical  land-taxes. 
He  gives  them  to  men  like  himself — autocratic  to  the 
poor,  easy-going  to  members  of  his  own  class,  and  cynical 
concerning  the  grafts  of  grace. 

In  one  English  village  which  I  visited  the  living  was 
worth  seven  hundred  pounds,  with  the  use  of  a  fine  man 
sion  ;  as  the  incumbent  had  a  large  family,  he  lived  there. 
In  another  place  the  living  was  worth  a  thousand  pounds, 
and  the  incumbent  hired  a  curate,  himself  appearing 
twice  a  year,  on  Christmas  day  and  on  the  King's  birth 
day,  to  preach  a  sermon ;  the  rest  of  the  time  he  spent  in 
Paris.  It  is  worth  noting  that  in  1808  a  law  was  proposed 
compelling  absentee  pluralists — that  is,  clergymen  hold 
ing  more  than  one  "living" — to  furnish  curates  to  do 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  71 

their  work;  it  might  be  interesting  to  note  that  this  law 
met  with  strenuous  clerical  opposition,  the  house  of  Bish 
ops  voting  against  it  without  a  division.  Thus  we  may 
understand  the  sharp  saying  of  Karl  Marx,  that  the 
English  clergy  would  rather  part  with  thirty-eight  of 
their  thirty-nine  articles  than  with  one  thirty-ninth  of 
their  income. 

There  is  always  a  plentiful  supply  of  curates  in  Eng 
land.  They  are  the  sons  of  the  less  influential  ruling 
families,  and  of  the  clergy ;  they  have  been  trained  at  Ox 
ford  or  Cambridge,  and  possess  the  one  essential  quali 
fication,  that  they  are  gentlemen.  Their  average  price  is 
two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a  year;  their  function 
was  made  clear  to  me  when  I  attended  my  first  English 
tea-party.  There  was  a  wicker  table,  perhaps  a  foot  and 
a  half  square,  having  three  shelves,  one  below  the  other 
— on  the  top  layer  the  plates  and  napkins,  on  the  next 
the  muffins,  and  on  the  lowest  the  cake.  Said  the  host 
ess,  "Will  you  pass  the  curate,  please?"  I  looked  puz 
zled,  and  she  pointed.  "We  call  that  the  curate,  because 
it  does  the  work  of  a  curate." 

Graft  in  Tail 

As  one  of  America's  head  muck-rakers,  I  found  that 
I  was  popular  with  the  British  ruling  classes ;  they  found 
my  books  useful  in  their  campaigns  against  democracy, 
and  they  were  surprised  and  disconcerted  when  they 
found  I  did  not  agree  with  their  interpretation  of  my 
writings.  I  had  told  of  corruption  in  American  politics ; 
surely  I  must  know  that  in  England  they  had  no  such 
evils !  I  explained  that  they  did  not  have  to ;  their  graft, 
to  use  their  own  legal  phrase,  was  "in  tail" ;  the  grafters 
had,  as  a  matter  of  divine  right,  the  things  which  in 


72  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

America  they  had  to  buy.  In  America,  for  instance, 
we  had  a  Senate,  a  "Millionaire's  Club",  for  admission  to 
which  the  members  paid  in  cash;  but  in  England  the 
same  men  came  to  the  same  position  as  their  birth-right. 
Political  corruption  is  not  an  end  in  itself,  it  is  merely  a 
means  to  exploitation;  and  of  exploitation  England  has 
even  more  than  America.  When  I  explained  this,  my 
popularity  with  the  British  ruling  classes  vanished 
quickly. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  England  is  more  like  America 
than  she  realizes;  her  British  reticence  has  kept  her 
ignorant  about  herself.  I  could  not  carry  on  my  business 
in  England,  because  of  the  libel  laws,  which  have  as 
their  first  principle  "the  greater  the  truth,  the  greater  the 
libel".  Englishmen  read  with  satisfaction  what  I  write 
about  America ;  but  if  I  should  turn  my  attention  to  their 
own  country,  they  would  send  me  to  jail  as  they  sent 
Frank  Harris.  The  fact  is  that  the  new  men  in  Eng 
land,  the  lords  of  coal  and  iron  and  shipping  and  beer, 
have  bought  their  way  into  the  landed  aristocracy  for 
cash,  just  as  our  American  senators  have  done ;  they  have 
bought  the  political  parties  with  campaign  gifts,  pre 
cisely  as  in  America;  they  have  taken  over  the  press, 
whether  by  outright  purchase  like  Northcliffe,  or  by  ad 
vertising  subsidy — both  of  which  methods  we  Americans 
know.  Within  the  last  decade  or  two  another  group  has 
been  coming  into  control ;  and  not  merely  is  this  the 
same  class  of  men  as  in  America,  it  frequently  consists 
of  the  same  invididuals.  These  are  the  big  money 
lenders,  the  international  financiers  who  are  the  fine  and 
final  flower  of  the  capitalist  system.  These  gentlemen 
make  the  world  their  home — or,  as  Shakespeare  puts  it, 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  73 

their  oyster.  They  know  how  to  fit  themselves  to  all 
environments;  they  are  Catholics  in  Rome  and  Vienna, 
country  gentlemen  in  London,  bons  vivants  in  Paris, 
democrats  in  Chicago,  Socialists  in  Petrograd,  and  He 
brews  wherever  they  are. 

And  of  course,  in  buying  the  English  government, 
these  new  classes  have  bought  the  English  Church. 
Skeptics  and  men  of  the  world  as  they  are,  they  know 
that  they  must  have  a  Religion.  They  have  read  the 
story  of  the  French  revolution,  and  the  shadow  of  the 
guillotine  is  always  over  their  thoughts;  they  see  the 
giant  of  labor,  restless  in  his  torment,  groping  as  in  a 
nightmare  for  the  throat  of  his  enemy.  Who  can  blind 
the  eyes  of  this  giant,  who  can  chain  him  to  his  couch  of 
slumber?  There  is  but  one  agent,  without  rival — the 
Keeper  of  the  Holy  Secrets,  the  Deputy  of  the  Almighty 
Awfulness,  the  Giver  and  Withholder  of  Eternal  Life. 
Tremble,  slave!  Fall  down  and  bow  your  forehead  in 
the  dust!  I  can  see  in  my  memory  the  sight  that 
thrilled  my  childhood — my  grim  old  Bishop,  clad  in  his 
gorgeous  ceremonial  robes,  stretching  out  his  hands  ovei 
the  head  of  the  new  priest,  and  pronouncing  that  most 
deadly  of  all  the  Christian  curses : 

"Whose  sins  thou  dost  forgive,  they  are  forgiven ;  and 
whose  sins  thou  dost  retain,  they  are  retained !" 

Bishops  and  Beer 

For  example,  the  International  Shylocks  wanted  the 
diamond  mines  of  South  Africa — wanted  them  more 
firmly  governed  and  less  firmly  taxed  than  could  be 
arranged  with  the  Old  Man  of  the  Boers.  So  the  armies 
of  England  were  sent  to  subjugate  the  country.  You 
might  think  they  would  have  had  the  good  taste  to 


74  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

leave  the  lowly  Jesus  out  of  this  affair — but  if  so,  you 
have  missed  the  essential  point  about  established  re 
ligion.  The  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  are  set  up  for 
the  populace  to  revere,  and  when  the  robber-classes 
need  a  blessing  upon  some  enterprise,  then  is  the  oppor 
tunity  for  the  bishops,  priests  and  deacons  to  earn  their 
"living."  During  the  Boer  war  the  blood-lust  of  the 
English  clergy  was  so  extreme  that  writers  in  the  dig 
nified  monthly  reviews  felt  moved  to  protest  against 
it.  When  the  pastors  of  Switzerland  issued  a  collective 
protest  against  cruelties  to  women  and  children  in  the 
South  African  concentration-camps,  it  was  the  Right 
Reverend  Bishop  of  Winchester  who  was  brought  for 
ward  to  make  reply.  Nowadays  all  England  is  reading 
Bernhardi,  and  shuddering  at  Prussian  glorification  of 
war;  but  no  one  mentions  Bishop  Welldon  of  Calcutta, 
who  advocated  the  Boer  war  as  a  means  of  keeping  the 
nation  "virile";  nor  Archbishop  Alexander,  who  said 
that  it  was  God's  way  of  making  "noble  natures". 

The  British  God  had  other  ways  of  improving  na 
tions — for  example,  the  opium  traffic.  The  British 
traders  had  been  raising  the  poppy  in  India  and  selling 
its  juice  to  the  Chinese.  They  had  made  perhaps  a 
hundred  million  "noble  natures"  by  this  method;  and 
also  they  were  making  a  hundred  million  dollars  a  year. 
The  Chinese,  moved  by  their  new  "virility,"  undertook 
to  destroy  some  opium,  and  to  stop  the  traffic ;  where 
upon  it  was  necessary  to  use  British  battle-ships  to 
punish  and  subdue  them.  Was  there  any  difficulty  in 
persuading  the  established  church  of  Jesus  to  bless  this 
holy  war?  There  was  not!  Lord  Shaftesbury,  himself 
the  most  devout  of  Anglicans,  commented  with  horror 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  75 

upon  the  attitude  of  the  clergy,  and  wrote  in  his  diary : 

I  rejcice  that  this  cruel  and  debasing  opium  war  is  termi 
nated.  We  have  triumphed  in  one  of  the  most  lawless,  unneces 
sary,  and  unfair  struggles  in  the  records  of  history;  and  Chris 
tians  have  shed  more  heathen  blood  in  two  years,  than  the 
heathens  have  shed  of  Christian  blood  in  two  centuries. 

That  was  in  1843;  for  seventy  years  thereafter 
pious  England  continued  to  force  the  opium  traffic 
upon  protesting  China,  and  only  in  the  last  two  or  three 
years  has  the  infamy  been  brought  to  an  end.  Through 
out  the  long  controversy  the  attitude  of  the  church  was 
such  that  Li  Hung  Chang  was  moved  to  assert  in  a  let 
ter  to  the  Anti-Opium  Society : 

Opium  is  a  subject  in  the  discussion  of  which  England  and 
China  can  never  meet  on  a  common  ground.  China  views  the 
whole  question  from  a  moral  standpoint,  England  from  a  fiscal. 

And  just  as  the  Chinese  people  were  poisoned  with 
opium,  so  the  English  people  are  being  poisoned  with 
alcohol.  Both  in  town  and  country,  labor  is  sodden  with 
it.  Scientists  and  reformers  are  clamoring  for  restric 
tion — and  what  prevents?  Head  and  front  of  the  op 
position  for  a  century,  standing  like  a  rock,  has  been 
the  Established  Church.  The  Rev.  Dawson  Burns,  his 
torian  of  the  early  temperance  movement,  declares  that 
"among  its  supporters  I  cannot  recall  one  Church  of 
England  minister  of  influence."  When  Asquith  brought 
in  his  bill  for  the  restriction  of  the  traffic  in  beer,  he 
was  confronted  with  petitions  signed  by  members  of 
the  clergy,  protesting  against  the  act.  And  what  was 
the  basis  of  their  protest  ?  That  beer  is  a  food  and  not 
a  poison?  Yes,  of  course ;  but  also  that  there  was  prop 
erty  invested  in  brewing  it.  Three  hundred  and  thirty- 


76  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

two  clergy  of  the  diocese  of  Peterborough  declared : 

We  do  strongly  protest  against  the  main  provisions  of  the 
present  bill  as  creating  amongst  our  people  a  sense  of  grave  in 
justice  as  amounting  to  a  confiscation  of  private  property, 
spelling  ruin  for  thousands  of  quite  innocent  people,  and  provok 
ing  deep  and  widespread  resentment,  which  must  do  harm  to  our 
cause  and  hinder  our  aims. 

I  have  come  upon  references  to  another  and  even 
more  plainspoken  petition,  signed  by  1,280  clergymen ; 
but  war-time  facilities  for  research  have  not  enabled 
me  to  find  the  text.  In  Prof.  Henry  C.  Vedder's  "Jesus 
Christ  and  the  Social  Question,"  we  read : 

It  was  authoritatively  stated  a  short  time  ago  that  Mr. 
Asquith's  temperance  bill  was  defeated  in  Parliament  through 
the  opposition  of  clergymen  who  had  invested  their  savings  in 
brewery  stock,  the  profits  of  which  might  have  been  lessened 
by  the  bill. 

Also  the  power  of  the  clergy,  combined  with  the 
brewer,  was  sufficient  to  put  through  Parliament  a 
provision  that  no  prohibition  legislation  should  ever 
be  passed  without  providing  for  compensation  to  the 
owners  of  the  industry.  Today,  all  over  America,  ap 
peals  are  being  made  to  the  people  to  eat  less  grain; 
the  grain  is  being  shipped  to  England,  some  of  it  to  be 
made  into  beer;  and  a  high  Anglican  prelate,  his 
Grace  the  Archbishop  of  York,  comes  to  America  to 
urge  us  to  increased  sacrifices,  and  in  his  first  news 
paper  interview  takes  occasion  to  declare  that  his 
church  is  not  in  favor  of  prohibition  as  a  measure  of 
war-time  economy ! 

Anglicanism  and  Alcohol 

This  partnership  of  Bishops  and  Beer  is  painfully 
familiar  to  British  radicals;  they  see  it  at  work  in 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  77 

every  election — the  publican  confusing  the  voters  with 
spirits,  while  the  parson  confuses  them  with  spiritual 
ity.  There  are  two  powerful  societies  in  England  em 
ploying  this  deadly  combination — the  "Anti-Socialist 
Union"  and  the  "Liberty  and  Property  Defense 
League."  If  you  scan  the  lists  of  the  organizers,  di 
rectors  and  subsidizers  of  these  satanic  institutions, 
you  find  Tory  politicians  and  landlords,  prominent 
members  of  the  higher  clergy,  and  large-scale  dealers 
in  drunkenness.  I  attended  in  London  a  meeting  called 
by  the  "Liberty  and  Property  Defense  League,"  to  list 
en  to  a  denunciation  of  Socialism  by  W.  H.  Mallock,  a 
master  sophist  of  Roman  Catholicism;  upon  the  plat 
form  were  a  bishop  and  half  a  dozen  members  of  the 
Anglican  clergy,  together  with  the  secretary  of  the 
Federated  Brewers'  Association,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Wine,  Spirit,  and  Beer  Trade  Association,  and  three  or 
four  other  alcoholic  magnates. 

In  every  public  library  in  England  and  many  in 
America  you  will  find  an  assortment  of  pamphlets  pub 
lished  by  these  organizations,  and  scholarly  volumes 
endorsed  by  them,  in  which  the  stock  misrepresenta 
tions  of  Socialism  are  perpetuated.  Some  of  these  writ 
ings  are  brutal — setting  forth  the  ethics  of  exploita 
tion  in  the  manner  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Malthus,  the 
English  clergyman  who  supplied  for  capitalist  depre 
dation  a  basis  in  pretended  natural  science.  Said  this 
shepherd  of  Jesus : 

A  man  who  is  born  into  a  world  already  possessed,  if  he 
cannot  get  subsistence  from  his  parents,  and  if  society  does  not 
want  his  labor,  has  no  claim  of  right  to  the  smallest  portion  of 
food,  and  in  fact  has  no  business  to  be  where  he  is.  At  Nature's 


78  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

mighty  feast  there  is  no  cover  for  him.   She  tells  him  to  be  gone, 
and  will  quickly  execute  her  own  orders. 

Such  was  the  tone  of  the  ruling  classes  in  the  nine 
teenth  century ;  but  it  was  found  that  for  some  reason 
this  failed  to  stop  the  growth  of  Socialism,  and  so  in 
our  time  the  clerical  defenders  of  Privilege  have  grown 
subtle  and  insinuating.  They  inform  us  now  that  they 
have  a  deep  sympathy  with  our  fundamental  purposes ; 
they  burn  with  pity  for  the  poor,  and  they  would  really 
and  truly  wish  happiness  to  everyone,  not  merely  in 
Heaven,  but  right  here  and  now.  However,  there  are 
so  many  complications — and  so  they  proceed  to  set  out 
all  the  anti-Socialist  bug-a-boos.  Here  for  example, 
is  the  Rev.  James  Stalker,  D.  D.,  expounding  "The 
Ethics  of  Jesus,"  and  admonishing  us  extremists : 

Efforts  to  transfer  money  and  property  from  one  set  of 
hands  to  another  may  be  inspired  by  the  same  passions  as  have 
blinded  the  present  holders  to  their  own  highest  good,  and  may 
be  accompanied  with  injustice  as  extreme  as  has  ever  been  mani 
fested  by  the  rich  and  powerful. 

And  again,  the  Rev.  W.  Sanday,  D.  D.,  an  especially 
popular  clerical  author,  gives  us  this  sublime  utterance 
of  religion  on  wage-slavery : 

The  world  is  full  of  mysteries,  but  some  clear  lines  run 
through  them,  of  which  this  is  one.  Where  God  has  been  so  pa 
tient,  it  is  not  for  us  to  be  impatient. 

And  again,  Professor  Robert  Flint,  of  Edinburgh 
University,  a  clergyman,  author  of  a  big  book  attack- 
ing  Socialism,  and  bringing  us  back  to  the  faith  of  our 
fathers : 

The  great  bulk  of  human  misery  is  due,  not  to  social  ar 
rangements,  but  to  personal  vices. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  79 

I  study  Professor  Flint's  volume  in  the  effort  to  find 
just  what,  if  anything,  he  would  have  the  church  do 
about  the  evils  of  our  time.  I  find  him  praising  the  ser 
mons  of  Dr.  Westcott,  Bishop  of  Durham,  as  being  the 
proper  sort  for  clergymen  to  preach.  Bishop  Westcott, 
whether  he  is  talking  to  a  high  society  congregation, 
or  to  one  of  workingmen,  shows  "an  exquisite  sense  of 
knowing  always  where  to  stop."  So  I  consulted  the 
Bishop's  volume,  "The  Social  Aspects  of  Christianity" 
and  I  see  at  once  why  he  is  popular  with  the  anti- 
Socialist  propagandists — neither  I  or  any  other  man 
can  possibly  discover  what  he  really  means,  or  what 
he  really  wants  done. 

I  was  fascinated  by  this  Westcott  problem ;  I  thought 
maybe  if  I  kept  on  the  good  Bishop's  trail,  I  might  in 
the  end  find  something  a  plain  man  could  understand ; 
so  I  got  the  beautiful  two-volume  "Life  of  Brooke  West 
cott,  by  his  Son" — and  there  I  found  an  exposition  of 
the  social  purposes  of  bishops !  In  the  year  1892  there 
was  a  strike  in  Durham,  which  is  in  the  coal  country; 
the  employers  tried  to  make  a  cut  in  wages,  and  some 
ten  thousand  men  walked  out,  and  there  was  a  long 
and  bitter  struggle,  which  wrung  the  episcopal  heart. 
There  was  much  consultation  and  correspondence  on 
episcopal  stationery,  and  at  last  the  masters  and  men 
were  got  together,  with  the  Bishop  as  arbitrator,  and 
the  dispute  was  triumphantly  settled — how  do  you  sup 
pose  ?  On  the  basis  of  a  ten  per  cent  reduction  in  wages ! 

I  know  nothing  quainter  in  the  history  of  English 
graft  than  the  naivete  with  which  the  Bishop's  biogra 
pher  and  son  tells  the  story  of  this  episcopal  venture 
into  reality.  The  prelate  came  out  from  the  conference 


80  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

"all  smiles,  and  well  satisfied  with  the  result  of  his 
day's  work."  As  for  his  followers,  they  were  in  ecsta- 
cies;  they  "seized  and  waltzed  one  another  around  on 
the  carriage  drive  as  madly  as  ever  we  danced  at  a  flow 
er  show  ball.  Hats  and  caps  are  thrown  into  the  air, 
and  we  cheer  ourselves  hoarse."  The  Bishop  proceeds 
to  his  palace,  and  sends  one  more  communication  on 
episcopal  stationery — an  order  to  all  his  clergy  to 
"offer  their  humble  and  hearty  thanks  to  God  for  our 
happy  deliverance  from  the  strife  by  which  the  diocese 
has  been  long  afflicted."  Strange  to  say,  there  were  a 
few  varlets  in  Durham  who  did  not  appreciate  the 
services  of  the  bold  Bishop,  and  one  of  them  wrote  and 
circulated  some  abusive  verses,  in  which  he  made  ref 
erence  to  the  Bishop's  comfortable  way  of  life.  The  bi 
ographer  then  explains  that  the  Bishop  was  so  tender 
hearted  that  he  suffered  for  the  horses  who  drew  his 
episcopal  coach,  and  so  ascetic  that  he  would  have  lived 
on  tea  and  toast  if  he  had  been  permitted  to.  A  curious 
condition  in  English  society,  where  the  Bishop  would 
have  lived  on  tea  and  toast,  but  was  not  permitted  to ; 
while  the  working  people,  who  didn't  want  to  live  on  tea 
and  toast,  were  compelled  to ! 

Dead  Cats 

For  more  than  a  hundred  years  the  Anglican  clergy 
have  been  fighting  with  every  resource  at  their  com 
mand  the  liberal  and  enlightened  men  of  England  who 
wished  to  educate  the  masses  of  the  people.  In  1807  the 
first  measure  for  a  national  school-system  was  de 
nounced  by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  as  "deroga 
tory  to  the  authority  of  the  Church."  As  a  counter- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  81 

measure,  his  supporters  established  the  "National  So 
ciety  for  Promoting  the  Education  of  the  Poor  in  the 
Doctrines  of  the  Established  Church";  and  the  founder 
of  the  organization,  a  clergyman,  advocated  a  barn  as 
a  good  structure  for  a  school,  and  insisted  that  the  chil 
dren  of  the  workers  "should  not  be  taught  beyond  their 
station."  In  1840  a  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  o: 
Education  was  appointed,  but  bowed  to  the  will  ox  the 
Archbishops,  setting  forth  the  decree  of  "their  lord 
ships"  that  "the  first  purpose  of  all  instruction  must  be 
the  regulation  of  the  thoughts  and  habits  of  the  chil 
dren  by  the  doctrine  and  precepts  of  revealed  religion," 
In  1850  a  bill  for  secular  education  was  denounced  as 
presenting  to  the  country  "a  choice  between  Heaver  or 
Hell,  God  or  the  Devil."  In  1870,  Forster,  author  of  the 
still  unpassed  bill,  wrote  that  while  the  parsons  were 
disputing,  the  children  of  the  poor  were  "growing  into 
savages." 

As  with  Education,  so  with  Social  Reform.  During 
the  struggle  to  abolish  slavery  in  the  British  colonies, 
some  enthusiasts  endeavored  to  establish  the  doctrine 
that  Christian  baptism  conferred  emancipation  upon 
negroes  who  accepted  it ;  whereupon  the  Bishop  of  Lon 
don  laid  down  the  formula  of  exploitation :  "Christian 
ity  and  the  embracing  of  the  gospel  do  not  make  the 
least  alteration  of  civil  property." 

Gladstone,  who  was  a  democrat  when  he  was  not 
religious,  spoke  of  the  cultured  classes  of  England : 

In  almost  every  one,  if  not  every  one,  of  the  greatest  political 
controversies  of  the  last  fifty  years,  whether  they  affected  the 
franchise,  whether  they  affected  commerce,  whether  they  affected 
religion,  whether  they  affected  the  bad  and  abominable  institu- 


82  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

tion  of  slavery,  or  what  subject  they  touched,  these  leisured 
classes,  these  educated  classes,  these  titled  classes  have  been  in 
the  wrong. 

The  "Great  Commoner"  did  not  add  "these  religious 
classes,"  for  he  belonged  to  the  religious  classes  him 
self  ;  but  a  study  of  the  record  will  supply  the  gap.  The 
Church  opposed  all  the  reform  measures  which  Glad 
stone  himself  put  through.  It  opposed  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1832.  It  opposed  all  the  social  reforms  of  Lord 
Shaftesbury.  This  noble-hearted  Englishman  com 
plained  that  at  first  only  a  single  minister  of  religion 
supported  him,  and  to  the  end  only  a  few.  He  ex 
pressed  himself  as  distressed  and  puzzled  "to  find  sup 
port  from  infidels  and  non-professors;  opposition  or 
coldness  from  religionists  or  declaimers." 

And  to  our  own  day  it  has  been  the  same.  In  1894 
the  House  of  Bishops  voted  solidly  against  the  Em 
ployers'  Liability  Law.  The  House  of  Bishops  opposed 
Home  Rule,  and  beat  it ;  the  House  of  Bishops  opposed 
Womans'  Suffrage,  and  voted  against  it  to  the  end. 
Concerning  this  establishment  Lord  Shaftesbury,  him 
self  the  most  devout  of  Englishmen,  used  the  vivid 
phrase:  "this  vast  aquarium  full  of  cold-blooded  life." 
He  told  the  Bishops  that  he  would  give  up  preaching  to 
them  about  ecclesiastical  reform,  because  he  knew  that 
they  would  never  begin.  Another  member  of  the  Brit 
ish  aristocracy,  the  Hon.  Geo.  Russell,  has  written  of 
their  record  and  adventures: 

They  were  defenders  of  absolutism,  slavery,  and  the  bloody 
penal  code;  they  were  the  resolute  opponents  of  every  political 
or  social  reform;  and  they  had  their  reward  from  the  nation  out 
side  Parliament.  The  Bishop  of  Bristol  had  his  palace  sacked  and 
burnt;  the  Bishop  of  London  could  not  keep  an  engagement  to 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  83 

preach  lest  the  congregation  should  stone  him.  The  Bishop  of 
Litchfield  barely  escaped  with  his  life  after  preaching  at  St. 
Bride's,  Fleet  Street.  Archbishop  Howley,  entering  Canterbury 
for  his  primary  visitation,  was  insulted,  spat  upon,  and  only 
brought  by  a  circuitous  route  to  the  Deanery,  amid  the  execra 
tions  of  the  mob.  On  the  5th  of  November  the  Bishops  of  Exeter 
and  Winchester  were  burnt  in  effigy  close  to  their  own  palace 
gates.  Archbishop  Howley's  chaplain  complained  that  a  dead 
cat  had  been  thrown  at  him,  when  the  Archbishop — a  man  of 
apostolic  meekness — replied:  "You  should  be  thankful  that  it 
was  not  a  live  one." 

The  people  had  reason  for  this  conduct — as  you  will 
always  find  they  have,  if  you  take  the  trouble  to  in 
quire.  Let  me  quote  another  member  of  the  English 
ruling  classes,  Mr.  Conrad  Noel,  who  gives  "an  instance 
of  the  procedure  of  Church  and  State  about  this  pe 
riod": 

In  1832  six  agricultural  labourers  in  South  Dorsetshire,  led 
by  one  of  their  class,  George  Loveless,  in  receipt  of  9s.  a  week 
each,  demanded  the  10s.  rate  of  wages  usual  in  the  neighbour 
hood.  The  result  was  a  reduction  to  8s.  An  appeal  was  made  to 
the  chairman  of  the  local  bench,  who  decided  that  they  must  work 
for  whatever  their  masters  chose  to  pay  them.  The  parson,  who 
had  at  first  promised  his  help,  now  turned  against  them,  and  the 
masters  promptly  reduced  the  wage  to  7s.,  with  a  threat  of 
further  reduction.  Loveless  then  formed  an  agricultural  union, 
for  which  all  seven  were  arrested,  treated  as  convicts,  and  com 
mitted  to  the  assizes.  The  prison  chaplain  tried  to  bully  them  into 
submission.  The  judge  determined  to  convict  them,  and  directed 
that  they  should  be  tried  for  mutiny  under  an  act  of  George  III, 
specially  passed  to  deal  with  the  naval  mutiny  at  the  Nore.  The 
grand  jury  were  landowners,  and  the  petty  jury  were  farmers; 
both  judge  and  jury  were  churchmen  of  the  prevailing  type.  The 
judge  summed  up  as  follows:  "Not  for  anything  that  you  have 
done,  or  that  I  can  prove  that  you  intend  to  do,  but  for  an  ex 
ample  to  others  I  consider  it  my  duty  to  pass  the  sentence  of 


84  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

seven  years'  penal  transportation  across  His  Majesty's  high  seas 
upon  each  and  every  one  of  you." 

Suffer  Little  Children 

The  founder  of  Christianity  was  a  man  who  special 
ized  in  children.  He  was  not  afraid  of  having  His  dis 
courses  disturbed  by  them,  He  did  not  consider  them 
superfluous.  "Of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven",  He 
said ;  and  His  Church  is  the  inheritor  of  this  tradition — 
"feed  my  lambs".  There  were  children  in  Great  Britain 
in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  we  may 
see  what  was  done  with  them  by  turning  to  Gibbin's 
"Industrial  History  of  England": 

Sometimes  regular  traffickers  would  take  the  place  of  the 
manufacturer,  and  transfer  a  number  of  children  to  a  factory 
district,  and  there  keep  them,  generally  in  some  dark  cellar,  till 
they  could  hand  them  over  to  a  mill  owner  in  want  of  hands,  who 
would  come  and  examine  their  height,  strength,  and  bodily  ca 
pacities,  exactly  as  did  the  slave  owners  in  the  American  mar 
kets.  After  that  the  children  were  simply  at  the  mercy  of  their 
owners,  nominally  as  apprentices,  but  in  reality  as  mere  slaves, 
who  got  no  wages,  and  whom  it  was  not  worth  while  even  to 
feed  and  clothe  properly,  because  they  were  so  cheap  and  their 
places  could  be  so  easily  supplied.  It  was  often  arranged  by  the 
parish  authorities,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  imbeciles,  that  one  idiot 
should  be  taken  by  the  mill  owner  with  every  twenty  sane  chil 
dren.  The  fate  of  these  unhappy  idiots  was  even  worse  than  that 
of  the  others.  The  secret  of  their  final  end  has  never  been  dis 
closed,  but  we  can  form  some  idea  of  their  awful  sufferings  from 
the  hardships  of  the  other  victims  to  capitalist  greed  and  cruelty. 
The  hours  of  their  labor  were  only  limited  by  exhaustion,  after 
many  modes  of  torture  had  been  unavailingly  applied  to  force 
continued  work.  Children  were  often  worked  sixteen  hours  a 
day,  by  day  and  by  night. 

In  the  year  1819  an1  act  of  Parliament  was  proposed 
limiting  the  labor  of  children  nine  years  of  age  to  four- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  85 

teen  hours  a  day.  This  would  seem  to  have  been  a 
reasonable  provision,  likely  to  have  won  the  approval  of 
Christ ;  yet  the  bill  was  violently  opposed  by  Christian 
employers,  backed  by  Christian  clergymen.  It  was  in 
terfering  with  freedom  of  contract,  and  therefore  with 
the  will  of  Providence;  it  was  anathema  to  an  estab 
lished  Church,  whose  function  was  in  1819,  as  it  is  in 
1918,  and  was  in  1918  B.  C.,  to  teach  the  divine  origin 
and  sanction  of  the  prevailing  economic  order.  "Anu 
and  Baal  called  me,  Hammurabi,  the  exalted  prince, 
worshipper  of  the  gods" ....  so  begins  the  oldest  legal 
code  which  has  come  down  to  us,  from  2250  B.  C. ;  anJ 
the  coronation  service  of  the  English  church  is  made 
whole  out  of  the  same  thesis.  The  duty  of  submission, 
not  merely  to  divinely  chosen  King,  but  to  divinely 
chosen  Landlord  and  divinely  chosen  Manufacturer,  is 
implicit  in  the  church's  every  ceremony,  and  explicit  in 
many  of  its  creeds.  In  the  Litany  the  people  petition 
for  "increase  of  grace  to  hear  meekly  Thy  Word" ;  and 
here  is  this  "Word,"  as  little  children  are  made  to  learn 
it  by  heart.  If  there  exists  in  the  world  a  more  perfect 
summary  of  slave  ethics,  I  do  not  know  where  to  find  it. 

My  duty  towards  my  neighbour  is To  honour  and  obey 

the  King,  and  all  that  are  put  in  authority  under  him;  To  sub- 
ir  it  myself  to  all  my  governours,  teachers,  spiritual  pastors,  and 
masters:  To  order  myself  lowly  and  reverently  to  all  my  betters 
....  Not  to  covet  nor  desire  other  men's  goods ;  But  to  learn  and 
labour  truly  to  get  mine  own  living,  and  to  do  my  duty  in  that 
state  of  life,  unto  which  it  shall  please  God  to  call  me. 

A  hundred  years  ago  one  of  the  most  popular  of 
British  writers  was  Hannah  More.  She  and  her  sister 
Martha  went  to  live  in  the  coal-country,  to  teach  this 


86  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

"catechism"  to  the  children  of  the  starving  miners. 
The  "Mendip  Annals"  is  the  title  of  a  book  in  which 
they  tell  of  their  ten  years'  labors  in  a  village  popularly 
known  as  "Little  Hell."  In  this  place  two  hundred  peo 
ple  we. •-;  crowded  into  nineteen  houses.  "There  is  not 
one  creature  in  it  that  can  gi  /e  a  cup  of  broth  if  it  would 
save  a  life."  In  one  winter  eighteen  perished  of  "a  put 
rid  fever",  and  the  clergyman  "could  not  raise  a  six 
pence  to  save  a  life." 

And  what  did  the  pious  sisters  make  of  all  this? 
From  cover  to  cover  you  find  in  the  "Mendip  Annals" 
n.  single  word  of  social  protest,  not  even  of  social  sus 
picion.  That  wages  of  a  shilling  a  day  might  have  any 
thing  to  do  with  moral  degeneration  was  a  proposition 
beyond  the  mental  powers  of  England's  most  popular 
woman  writer.  She  was  perfectly  content  that  a  woman 
should  be  sentenced  to  death  for  stealing  butter  from 
a  dealer  who  had  asked  what  the  woman  thought  too 
high  a  price.  When  there  came  a  famine,  and  the  chil 
dren  of  these  mine-slaves  were  dying  like  flies,  Hannah 
More  bade  them  be  happy  because  God  had  sent  them 
her  pious  self.  "In  suffering  by  the  scarcity,  you  have 
but  shared  in  the  common  lot,  with  the  pleasure  of 
knowing  the  advantage  you  have  had  over  many  vil 
lages  in  your  having  suffered  no  scarcity  of  religious 
instruction."  And  in  another  place  she  explained  that 
the  famine  was  caused  by  God  to  teach  the  poor  to  be 
grateful  to  the  rich ! 

Let  me  remind  you  that  probably  that  very  scarcity  has  been 
permitted  by  an  all-wise  and  gracious  Providence  to  unite  all 
ranks  of  people  together,  to  show  the  poor  how  immediately 
they  are  dependent  upon  the  rich,  and  to  show  both  rich  and 


THE  PROFITS  OF  HELIGION  87 

poor  that  they  are  all  dependent  upon  Himself.  It  has  also  en 
abled  you  to  see  more  clearly  the  advantages  you  derive  from  the 
government  and  constitution  of  this  country — to  observe  the 
benefits  flowing  from  the  distinction  of  rank  and  fortune,  which 
has  enabled  the  high  to  so  liberally  assist  the  low. 

It  appears  that  the  villagers  were  entirely  con 
vinced  by  this  pious  reasoning ;  for  they  assembled  one 
Saturday  night  and  burned  an  effigy  of  Tom  Paine! 
This  proceeding  led  to  a  tragic  consequence,  for  one  of 
the  "common  people,"  known  as  Robert,  "was  overtaken 
by  liquor,"  and  was  unable  to  appear  at  Sunday  School 
next  day.  This  fall  from  grace  occasioned  intense  re 
morse  in  Robert.  "It  preyed  dreadfully  upon  his  mind 
for  many  months,"  records  Martha  More,  "and  despair 
seemed  at  length  to  take  possession  of  him."  Hannah 
had  some  conversation  with  him,  and  read  him  some 
suitable  passages  from  "The  Rise  and  Progress".  "At 
length  the  Almighty  was  pleased  to  shine  into  his  heart 
and  give  him  comfort." 

Nor  should  you  imagine  that  this  saintly  stupidity 
was  in  any  way  unique  in  the  Anglican  establishment. 
We  read  in  the  letters  of  Shelley  how  his  father  tor 
mented  him  with  Archdeacon  Paley's  "Evidences"  as 
a  cure  for  atheism.  This  eminent  churchman  wrote  a 
book,  which  he  himself  ranked  first  among  his  writings, 
called  "Reasons  for  Contentment,  addressed  to  the 
Labouring  Classes  of  the  British  Public."  In  this  book 
he  not  merely  proved  that  religion  "smooths  all  inequal 
ities,  because  it  unfolds  a  prospect  which  makes  all 
earthly  distinctions  nothing";  he  went  so  far  as  to 
prove  that,  quite  apart  from  religion,  the  British  ex 
ploiters  were  less  fortunate  than  those  to  whom  they 
paid  a  shilling  a  day. 


88  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Some  of  the  conditions  which  poverty  (if  the  condition  of  the 
labouring  part  of  mankind  must  be  so  called)  imposes,  are  not 
hardships,  but  pleasures.  Frugality  itself  is  a  pleasure.  It  is 
an  exercise  of  attention  and  contrivance,  which,  whenever  it  is 
successful,  produces  satisfaction This  is  lost  among  abund 
ance. 

And  there  was  William  Wilberforce,  as  sincere  a 
philanthropist  as  Anglicanism  ever  produced,  an  ardent 
supporter  of  Bible  societies  and  foreign  missions,  a 
champion  of  the  anti-slavery  movement,  and  also  of  the 
ruthless  "Combination  Laws,"  which  denied  to  British 
wage-slaves  all  chance  of  bettering  their  lot.  Wilber 
force  published  a  "Practical  View  of  the  System  of 
Christianity",  in  which  he  told  unblushingly  what  the 
Anglican  establishment  is  for.  In  a  chapter  which  he 
described  as  "the  basis  of  all  politics,"  he  explained 
that  the  purpose  of  religion  is  to  remind  the  poor 

That  their  more  lowly  path  has  been  allotted  to  them  by  the 
hand  of  God;  that  it  is  their  part  faithfully  to  discharge  its 
duties,  and  contentedly  to  bear  its  inconveniences;  that  the  ob 
jects  about  which  worldly  men  conflict  so  eagerly  are  not  worth 
the  contest;  that  the  peace  of  mind,  which  Religion  offers  in 
discriminately  to  all  ranks,  affords  more  true  satisfaction  than 
all  the  expensive  pleasures  which  are  beyond  the  poor  man's 
reach;  that  in  this  view  the  poor  have  the  advantage;  that  if 
their  superiors  enjoy  more  abundant  comforts,  they  are  also  ex 
posed  to  many  temptations  from  which  the  inferior  classes  are 
happily  extempted;  that,  "having  food  and  raiment,  they  should 
be  therewith  content,"  since  their  situation  in  life,  with  all  its 
evils,  is  better  than  they  have  deserved  at  the  hand  of  God;  and 
finally,  that  all  human  distinctions  will  soon  be  done  away,  and 
the  true  followers  of  Christ  will  all,  as  children  of  the  same 
Father,  be  alike  admitted  to  the  possession  of  the  same  heavenly 
inheritance.  Such  are  the  blessed  effects  of  Christianity  on  the 
temporal  well-being  of  political  communities. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  89 

The  Court  Circular 

The  Anglican  system  of  submission  has  been  trans 
planted  intact  to  the  soil  of  America.  When  King  George 
the  Third  lost  the  sovereignty  of  the  colonies,  the  bish 
ops  of  his  divinely  inspired  church  lost  the  control 
of  the  clergy  across  the  seas;  but  this  resolution  was 
purely  one  of  Church  politics  —  in  doctrine  and  ritual  the 
"Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  America"  remained  in 
e\  2ry  way  Anglican.  The  Iktle  children  of  our  free  re 
public  are  taught  the  same  slave-catechism,  "to  order 
myself  lowly  and  reverently  to  all  my  betters."  The  only 
difference  is  that  instead  of  being  told  "to  honour  and 
obey  the  King,"  they  are  told  "to  honour  and  obey  the 
rivil  authority." 

It  is  the  Church  of  Good  Society  in  England,  and  it 
is  the  same  in  Boston,  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Balti 
more,  Washington,  Charleston.  Just  as  our  ruling  classes 
have  provided  themselves  with  imitation  English  schools 
and  imitation  English  manners  and  imitation  English 
clothes  —  so  in  their  Heaven  they  have  provided  an  imi 
tation  English  monarch.  I  wonder  how  many  Americans 
realize  the  treason  to  democracy  they  are  committing 
when  they  allow  their  children  to  be  taught  a  symbolism 
and  liturgy  based  upon  absolutist  ideas.  I  take  up  the 
hymn-book  —  not  the  English,  but  the  sturdy,  independ 
ent,  democratic  American  hymn-book.  I  have  not  opened 
\t  for  twenty  years,  yet  the  greater  part  of  its  contents 
\s  as  familiar  to  me  as  the  syllables  of  my  own  name.  I 


Holy,  holy,  holy!   All  the  saints  adore  Thee, 
Casting  down  their  golden  crowns  around  the  glassy  sea; 
Cherubim  and  seraphim  bowing  down  before  Thee, 
Which  wert,  and  art,  and  ever  more  shall  be! 


90  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

One  might  quote  a  hundred  other  hymns  made  thus 
out  of  royal  imagery.  I  turn  at  random  to  the  part  head 
ed  "General,"  and  find  that  there  is  hardly  one  hymn  in 
which  there  is  not  "king,"  "throne,"  or  some  image  of 
homage  and  flattery.  The  first  hymn  begins — 

Ancient  of  days,  Who  sittest,  throned  in  glory; 
To  Thee  all  knees  are  bent,  all  voices  pray. 

And  the  second — 

Christ,  whose  glory  fills  the  skies — 

And  the  third- 
Lord  of  all  being,  throned  afar, 
Thy  glory  flames  from  sun  and  star. 

There  is  a  court  in  Heaven  above,  to  which  all  good 
Britons  look  up,  and  about  which  they  read  with  exactly 
the  same  thrills  as  they  read  the  Court  Circular.  The 
two  courts  have  the  same  ethical  code  and  the  same  man 
ners;  their  Sovereigns  are  jealous,  greedy  of  attention, 
self-conscious  and  profoundly  serious,  punctilious  and 
precise ;  their  existence  consisting  of  an  endless  round  of 
ceremonies,  and  they  being  incapable  of  boredom.  No 
member  of  the  Royal  Family  can  escape  this  regime 
even  if  he  wishes ;  and  no  more  can  any  member  of  the 
Holy  Family — not  even  the  meek  and  lowly  Jesus,  who 
chose  a  carpenter's  wife  for  his  mother,  and  showed  all 
his  earthly  days  a  preference  for  low  society. 

This  unconventional  Son  lived  obscurely;  he  never 
carried  weapons,  he  could  not  bear  to  have  so  much  as  a 
human  ear  cut  off  in  his  presence.  But  see  how  he  figures 
in  the  Court  Circular: 

The  Son  of  God  goes  forth  to  war, 

A  kingly  crown  to  gain: 
His  blood-red  banner  streams  afar: 

Who  follows  in  His  train? 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  91 

This  carpenter's  son  was  one  of  the  most  unpreten 
tious  men  on  earth ;  utterly  simple  and  honest — he  would 
not  even  let  anyone  praise  him.  When  some  one  called 
him  "good  Master,"  he  answered,  quickly,  "Why  callest 
thou  me  good?  There  is  none  good  save  one,  that  is, 
God."  But  this  simplicity  has  been  taken  with  depreca 
tion  by  his  church,  which  persists  in  heaping  compli 
ments  upon  him  in  conventional,  courtly  style : 

The  company  of  angels 

Are  praising  Thee  on  high; 
And  mortal  men,  and  all  things 

Created,   make    reply: 
All  Glory,  laud  and  honour, 

To  Thee,  Redeemer,  King 

The  impression  a  modern  man  gets  from  all  this  is 
the  unutterable  boredom  that  Heaven  must  be.  Can  one 
imagine  a  more  painful  occupation  than  that  of  the  saints 
— casting  down  their  golden  crowns  around  the  glassy 
sea — unless  it  be  that  of  the  Triumvirate  itself,  compelled 
to  sit  through  eternity  watching  these  saints,  and  listen 
ing  to  their  mawkish  and  superfluous  compliments! 

But  one  can  understand  that  such  things  are  neces 
sary  in  a  monarchy ;  they  are  necessary  if  you  are  going 
to  have  Good  Society,  and  a  Good  Society  church.  For 
Good  Society  is  precisely  the  same  thing  as  Heaven; 
that  is,  a  place  to  which  only  a  few  can  get  admission, 
and  those  few  are  bored.  They  spend  their  time  going 
through  costly  formalities — not  because  they  enjoy  it, 
but  because  of  its  effect  upon  the  populace,  which  reads 
about  them  and  sees  their  pictures  in  the  papers,  and 
now  and  then  is  allowed  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  their 
physical  Presences,  as  at  the  horse-show,  or  the  opera, 
or  the  coaching-parade. 


92  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Horn-blowing 

I  know  the  Church  of  Good  Society  in  America,  hav 
ing  studied  it  from  the  inside.  I  was  an  extraordinarily 
devout  little  boy ;  one  of  my  earliest  recollections — I  can 
not  have  been  more  than  four  years  of  age — is  of  carry 
ing  a  dust-brush  about  the  house  as  the  choir-boy  car 
ried  the  golden  cross  every  Sunday  morning.  I  remem 
ber  asking  if  I  might  say  the  "Lord's  prayer"  in  this 
fascinating  play;  and  my  mother's  reply:  "If  you  say  it 
reverently."  When  I  was  thirteen,  I  attended  service,  of 
my  own  volition  and  out  of  my  own  enthusiasm,  every 
single  day  during  the  forty  days  of  Lent;  at  the  age  of 
fifteen  I  was  teaching  Sunday-school.  It  was  the  Church 
of  the  Holy  Communion,  at  Sixth  Avenue  and  Twentieth 
Street,  New  York ;  and  those  who  know  the  city  will  un 
derstand  that  this  is  a  peculiar  location — precisely  half 
way  between  the  homes  of  some  of  the  oldest  and  most 
august  of  the  city's  aristocracy,  and  some  of  the  Vilest 
and  most  filthy  of  the  city's  slums.  The  aristocracy  were 
paying  for  the  church,  and  occupied  the  best  pews ;  they 
came,  perfectly  clad,  aus  dem  Ei  gegossen,  as  the  Ger 
mans  say,  with  the  manner  they  so  carefully  cultivate, 
gracious,  yet  infinitely  aloof.  The  service  was  made  for 
them — as  all  the  rest  of  the  world  is  made  for  them ;  the 
populace  was  permitted  to  occupy  a  fringe  of  vacant 
seats. 

The  assistant  clergyman  was  an  Englishman,  and  a 
gentleman ;  orthodox,  yet  the  warmest  man's  heart  I  have 
ever  known.  He  could  not  bear  to  have  the  church  re 
main  entirely  the  church  of  the  rich;  he  would  go  per 
sistently  into  the  homes  of  the  poor,  visiting  the  old  slum 
women  in  their  pitifully  neat  little  kitchens,  and  luring 
their  children  with  entertainments  and  Christmas  candy. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  93 

They  were  corralled  into  the  Sunday-school,  where  it 
was  my  duty  to  give  them  what  they  needed  for  the 
health  of  their  souls. 

I  taught  them  out  of  a  book  of  lessons ;  and  one  Sun 
day  it  would  be  Moses  in  the  Bulrushes,  and  next  Sunday 
it  would  be  Jonah  and  the  Whale,  and  next  Sunday  it 
would  be  Joshua  blowing  down  the  walls  of  Jericho. 
These  stories  were  reasonably  entertaining,  but  they 
seemed  to  me  futile,  not  to  the  point.  There  were  little 
morals  tagged  to  them,  but  these  lacked  relationship  to 
the  lives  of  little  slum-boys.  Be  good  and  you  will  be 
happy,  love  the  Lord  and  all  will  be  well  with  you; 
which  was  about  as  true  and  as  practical  as  the  procedure 
of  the  Fijians,  blowing  horns  to  drive  away  a  pestilence. 

I  had  a  mind,  you  see,  and  I  was  using  it.  I  was  read 
ing  the  papers,  and  watching  politics  and  business.  I 
followed  the  fates  of  my  little  slum-boys — and  what  I 
saw  was  that  Tammany  Hall  was  getting  them.  The 
liquor-dealers  and  the  brothel-keepers,  the  panders  and 
the  pimps,  the  crap-shooters  and  the  petty  thieves — all 
these  were  paying  the  policeman  and  the  politician  for  a 
chance  to  prey  upon  my  boys;  and  when  the  boys  got 
into  trouble,  as  they  were  continually  doing,  it  was  the 
clergyman  who  consoled  them  in  prison — but  it  was  the 
Tammany  leader  who  saw  the  judge  and  got  them  out. 
So  these  boys  got  their  lesson,  even  earlier  in  life  than  I 
got  mine — that  the  church  was  a  kind  of  amiable  fake,  a 
pious  horn-blowing ;  while  the  real  thing  was  Tammany. 

I  talked  about  this  with  the  vestrymen  and  the  ladies 
of  Good  Society ;  they  were  deeply  pained,  but  I  noticed 
that  they  did  nothing  practical  about  it;  and  gradually, 
as  I  went  on  to  investigate,  I  discovered  the  reason — 


94  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

that  their  incomes  came  from  real  estate,  traction,  gas 
and  other  interests,  which  were  contributing  the  main 
part  of  the  campaign  expenses  of  the  corrupt  Tammany 
machine,  and  of  its  equally  corrtipt  rival.  So  it  appeared 
that  these  immaculate  ladies  and  gentlemen,  aus  dem  Ei 
gegossen,  were  themselves  engaged,  unconsciously,  per 
haps,  but  none  the  less  effectively,  in  spreading  the  pesti 
lence  against  which  they  were  blowing  their  religious 
horns ! 

So  little  by  little  I  saw  my  beautiful  church  for  what 
it  was  and  is :  a  great  capitalist  interest,  an  integral  and 
essential  part  of  a  gigantic  predatory  system.  I  saw  that 
its  ethical  and  cultural  and  artistic  features,  however  sin 
cerely  they  might  be  meant  by  individual  clergymen, 
were  nothing  but  a  bait,  a  device  to  lure  the  poor  into  the 
trap  of  submission  to  their  exploiters.  And  as  I  went  on 
probing  into  the  secret  life  of  the  great  Metropolis  of 
Mammon,  and  laying  bare  its  infami-es  to  the  world,  I 
saw  the  attitud:  of  the  church  to  such  work;  I  met,  not 
sympathy  and  understanding,  but  sneers  and  denuncia 
tion — until  the  venerable  institution  which  had  once 
seemed  dignified  and  noble  became  to  me  as  a  sepulchre 
of  corruption. 

Trinity  Corporation 

There  stands  on  the  corner  of  Broadway  and  Wall 
Street  a  towering  brown-stone  edifice,  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  most  famous  churches  in  America.  As 
a  child  I  have  walked  through  its  church  yard  and  read 
the  quaint  and  touching  inscriptions  on  its  grave 
stones  ;  when  I  was  a  little  older,  and  knew  Wall  Street, 
it  seemed  to  me  a  sublime  thing  that  here  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  world's  infamy  there  should  be  raised, 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  95 

like  a  finger  of  warning,  this  symbol  of  Eternity  and 
Judgment.  Its  great  bell  rang  at  noon-time,  and  all  the 
traders  and  their  wage-slaves  had  to  listen,  whether 
they  would  or  no!  Such  was  Old  Trinity  to  my  young 
soul ;  and  what  is  it  in  reality  ? 

The  story  was  told  some  ten  years  ago  by  Charles 
Edward  Russell.  Trinity  Corporation  is  the  name  of 
the  concern,  and  it  is  one  of  the  great  landlords  of  New 
York.  In  the  early  days  it  bought  a  number  of  farms, 
and  these  it  has  held,  as  the  city  has  grown  up  around 
them,  until  in  1908  their  value  was  estimated  at  any 
where  from  forty  to  a  hundred  million  dollars.  The  true 
amount  has  never  been  made  public ;  to  quote  Russell's 
words : 

The  real  owners  of  the  property  are  the  communicants  of  the 
church.  For  94  years  none  of  the  owners  has  known  the  extent 
of  the  property,  nor  the  amount  of  the  revenue  therefrom,  nor 
what  is  done  with  the  money.  Every  attempt  to  learn  even  the 
simplest  fact  about  these  matters  has  been  baffled.  The  man 
agement  is  a  self  perpetuating  body,  without  responsibility  and 
without  supervision. 

And  the  writer  goes  on  to  describe  the  business 
policy  of  this  great  corporation,  which  is  simply  the 
English  land  system  complete.  It  refuses  to  sell  the 
land,  but  rents  it  for  long  periods,  and  the  tenant  builds 
the  house,  and  then  when  the  lease  expires,  the  Corpor 
ation  takes  over  the  house  for  a  nominal  sum.  Thus  it 
has  purchased  houses  for  as  low  as  $200,  and  made 
them  into  tenements,  and  rented  them  to  the  swarming 
poor  for  a  total  of  fifty  dollars  a  month.  The  houses 
were  not  built  for  tenements,  they  have  no  conveni 
ences,  they  are  not  fit  for  the  habitation  of  animals. 


96  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

The  article,  in  Everybody's  Magazine  for  July,  1908, 
gives  pictures  of  them,  which  are  horrible  beyond  be 
lief.  To  quote  the  writer  again : 

Decay,  neglect  and  squalor  seem  to  brood  wherever  Trinity 
is  an  owner.  Gladly  would  I  give  to  such  a  charitable  and  benev 
olent  institution  all  possible  credit  for  a  spirit  of  improvement 
manifested  anywhere,  but  I  can  find  no  such  manifestation.  I 
have  tramped  the  Eighth  Ward  day  after  day  with  a  list  of 
Trinity  properties  in  my  hand,  and  of  all  the  tenement  houses 
that  stand  there  on  Trinity  land,  I  have  not  found  one  that  is 
not  a  disgrace  to  civilization  and  to  the  City  of  New  York. 

It  happens  that  I  once  knew  the  stately  prelate  who 
presided  over  this  Corporation  of  Corruption.  I  imagine 
how  he  would  have  shivered  and  turned  pale  had  some 
angel  whispered  to  him  what  devilish  utterances  were 
some  day  to  proceed  from  the  lips  of  the  little  cherub 
with  shining  face  and  shining  robes  who  acted  as  the 
bishop's  attendant  in  the  stately  ceremonials  of  the 
Church!  Truly,  even  into  the  goodly  company  of  the 
elect,  even  to  the  most  holy  places  of  the  temple,  Satan 
makes  his  treacherous  way!  Even  under  the  conse 
crated  hands  of  the  bishop !  For  while  the  bishop  was 
blessing  me  and  taking  me  into  the  company  of  the 
sanctified,  I  was  thinking  about  what  the  papers  had 
reported,  that  the  bishop's  wife  had  been  robbed  of 
fifty  thousand  dollars  worth  of  jewels !  It  did  not  seem 
quite  in  accordance  with  the  doctrine  of  Jesus  that  a 
bishop's  wife  should  possess  fifty  thousand  dollars 
worth  of  jewels,  or  that  she  should  be  setting  the  blood 
hounds  of  the  police  on  the  train  of  a  human  being.  I 
asked  my  clergyman  friend  about  it,  and  remember  his 
patient  explanation — that  the  bishop  had  to  know  all 
classes  and  conditions  of  men :  his  wife  had  to  go 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  97 

the  rich  as  well  as  the  poor,  and  must  be  able  to  dress 
so  that  she  would  not  be  embarrassed.  The  Bishop  at 
this  time  was  making  it  his  life-work  to  raise  a  million 
dollars  for  the  beginning  of  a  great  Episcopal  cathe 
dral  ;  and  this  of  course  compelled  him  to  spend  much 
time  among  the  rich ! 

The  explanation  satisfied  me ;  for  of  course  I  thought 
there  had  to  be  cathedrals — despite  the  fact  that  both 
St.  Stephen  and  St.  Paul  had  declared  that  "the  Lord 
dwelleth  not  in  temples  made  with  hands."  In  the 
twenty-five  years  which  have  passed  since  that  time  the 
good  Bishop  has  passed  to  his  eternal  reward,  but  the 
mighty  structure  which  is  a  monument  to  his  visita 
tions  among  the  rich  towers  over  the  city  from  its 
vantage-point  on  Morningside  Heights.  It  is  called  the 
Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine ;  and  knowing  what  I 
know  about  the  men  who  contributed  its  funds,  and 
about  the  general  functions  of  the  churches  of  the 
Metropolis  of  Mammon,  it  would  not  seem  to  me  less 
holy  if  it  were  built,  like  the  monuments  of  ancient 
ravagers,  out  of  the  skulls  of  human  beings. 

Spiritual  Interpretation 

There  remains  to  say  a  few  words  as  to  the  intellec 
tual  functions  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  clergy.  Let  us 
realize  at  the  outset  that  they  do  their  preaching  in  the 
name  of  a  proletarian  rebel,  who  was  crucified  as  a 
common  criminal  because,  as  they  said,  "He  stirreth  up 
the  people."  An  embarrassing  "Savior"  for  the  church 
of  Good  Society,  you  might  imagine ;  but  they  manage 
to  fix  him  up  and  make  him  respectable. 

I  remember  something  analogous  in  my  own  boy- 


98  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

hood.  All  day  Saturday  I  ran  about  with  the  little 
street  rowdies,  I  stole  potatoes  and  roasted  them  in 
vacant  lots,  I  threw  mud  from  the  roofs  of  apartment- 
houses;  but  on  Saturday  night  I  went  into  a  tub  and 
was  lathered  and  scrubbed,  and  on  Sunday  I  came  forth 
in  a  newly  brushed  suit,  a  clean  white  collar  and  a  shin 
ing  tie  and  a  slick  derby  hat  and  a  pair  of  tight  gloves 
which  made  me  impotent  for  mischief.  Thus  I  was 
taken  and  paraded  up  Fifth  Avenue,  doing  my  part  of 
the  duties  of  Good  Society.  And  all  church-members 
go  through  this  same  performance ;  the  oldest  and  most 
venerable  of  them  steal  potatoes  and  throw  mud  all  week 
— and  then  take  a  hot  bath  of  repentance  and  put  on 
the  clean  clothing  of  piety.  In  this  same  way  their 
ministers  of  religion  are  occupied  to  scrub  and  clean  and 
dress  up  their  disreputable  Founder — to  turn  him  from 
a  proletarian  rebel  into  a  stained-glass-window  divinity. 

The  man  who  really  lived,  the  carpenter's  son,  they 
take  out  and  crucify  all  over  again.  As  a  young  poet 
has  phrased  it,  they  nail  him  to  a  jeweled  cross  with 
cruel  nails  of  gold.  Come  with  me  to  the  New  Golgotha 
and  witness  this  crucifixion;  take  the  nails  of  gold  in 
your  hands,  try  the  weight  of  the  jeweled  sledges! 
Here  is  a  sledge,  in  the  form  of  a  dignified  and  scholarly 
volume,  published  by  the  exclusive  house  of  Scribner, 
and  written  by  the  Bishop  of  my  boyhood,  the  Bishop 
whose  train  I  carried  in  the  stately  ceremonials :  "The 
Citizen  in  His  Relation  to  the  Industrial  Situation,"  by 
the  Right  Reverend  Henry  Codman  Potter,  D.  D.,  L.  L. 
D.,  D.  C.  L. — a  course  of  lectures  delivered  before  the 
sons  of  our  predatory  classes  at  Yale  University,  under 
the  endowment  of  a  millionaire  mining  king,  founder 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  99 

of  the  Phelps-Dodge  corporation,  which  the  other  day 
carried  out  the  deportation  from  their  homes  of  a  thou 
sand  striking  miners  at  Bisbee,  Arizona.  Says  my 
Bishop: 

Christ  did  not  denounce  wealth  any  more  than  he  denounced 
pauperism.  He  did  not  abhor  money;  he  used  it.  He  did  not 
abhor  the  company  of  rich  men;  he  sought  it.  He  did  not  in 
variably  scorn  or  even  resent  a  certain  profuseness  of  expend 
iture. 

And  do  you  think  that  the  late  Bishop  of  J.  P.  Mor 
gan  and  Company  stands  alone  as  an  utterer  of  schol 
arly  blasphemy,  a  driver  of  golden  nails  ?  In  the  course 
of  this  book  there  will  march  before  us  a  long  line  of 
the  clerical  retainers  of  Privilege,  on  their  way  to  the 
New  Golgotha  to  crucify  the  carpenter's  son :  the  Rec 
tor  of  the  Money  Trust,  the  Preacher  of  the  Coal  Trust, 
the  Priest  of  the  Traction  Trust,  the  Archbishop  of 
Tammany,  the  Chaplain  of  the  Millionaires'  Club,  the 
Pastor  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  the  Religious  Ed 
itor  of  the  New  Haven,  the  Sunday-school  Superintend 
ent  of  Standard  Oil.  We  shall  try  the  weight  of  their 
jewelled  sledges — books,  sermons,  newspaper-inter 
views,  after-dinner  speeches — wherewith  they  pound 
their  golden  nails  of  sophistry  into  the  bleeding  hands 
and  feet  of  the  proletarian  Christ. 

Here,  for  example,  is  Rev.  F.  G.  Peabody,  Professor 
of  Christian  Morals  at  Harvard  University.  Prof.  Pea- 
body  has  written  several  books  on  the  social  teachings 
of  Jesus ;  he  quotes  the  most  rabid  of  the  carpenter's 
denunciations  of  the  rich,  and  says : 

Is  it  possible  that  so  obvious  and  so  limited  a  message  as 
this,  a  teaching  so  slightly  distinguished  from  the  curbstone 


100  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

rhetoric  of  a  modern  agitator,  can  be  an  adequate  reproduction 
of  the  scope  and  power  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  ? 

The  question  answers  itself:  Of  course  not!  For 
Jesus  was  a  gentleman ;  he  is  the  head  of  a  church  at 
tended  by  gentlemen,  of  universities  where  gentlemen 
are  educated.  So  the  Professor  of  Christian  Morals 
proceeds  to  make  a  subtle  analysis  of  Jesus'  actions; 
demonstrating  therefrom  that  there  are  three  proper 
uses  to  be  made  of  great  wealth :  first,  for  almsgiving 
— "The  poor  ye  have  always  with  you!";  second,  for 
beauty  and  culture — buying  wine  for  wedding-feasts, 
and  ointment-boxes  and  other  objets  de  vertu;  and 
third,  "stewardship,"  "trusteeship" — which  in  plain 
English  is  "Big  Business." 

I  have  used  the  illustration  of  soap  and  hot  water; 
one  can  imagine  he  is  actually  watching  the  scrubbing 
process,  seeing  the  proletarian  Founder  emerging  all 
new  and  respectable  under  the  brush  of  this  capitalist 
professor.  The  professor  has  a  rule  all  his  own  for 
reading  the  scriptures ;  he  tells  us  that  when  there  are 
two  conflicting  sayings,  the  rule  of  interpretation  is 
that  "the  more  spiritual  is  to  be  preferred."  Thus,  one 
gospel  makes  Jesus  say:  "Blessed  are  ye  poor."  An 
other  puts  it :  "Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit."  The  first 
one  is  crude  and  literal;  obviously  the  second  must  be 
what  Jesus  meant !  In  other  words,  the  professor  and 
his  church  have  made  for  their  economic  masters  a 
treacherous  imitation  virtue  to  be  taught  to  wage- 
slaves,  a  quality  of  submissiveness,  impotence  and  futil 
ity,  which  they  call  by  the  name  of  "spirituality".  This 
virtue  they  exalt  above  all  others,  and  in  its  name  they 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  101 

cut  from  the  record  of  Jesus  everything  which  has  re 
lation  to  the  realities  of  life ! 

So  here  is  our  Professor  Peabody,  sitting  in  the  Plum- 
mer  chair  at  Harvard,  writing  on  "Jesus  Christ  and  the 
Social  Question,"  and  explaining: 

The  fallacy  of  the  Socialist  program  is  not  in  its  radicalism, 
but  in  its  externalism.  It  proposes  to  accomplish  by  economic 
change  what  can  be  attained  by  nothing  less  than  spiritual  re 
generation. 

And  here  is  "The  Churchman,"  organ  of  the  Episco 
palians  of  New  York,  warning  us : 

It  is  necessary  to  remember  that  something  more  than  ma 
terial  and  temporal  considerations  are  involved.  There  are  things 
of  more  importance  to  the  purposes  of  God  and  to  the  welfare 
of  humanity  than  economic  readjustments  and  social  amelioration. 

And  again : 

Without  doubt  there  is  a  strong  temptation  today,  bearing 
upon  clergy  and  laity  alike,  to  address  their  religious  energies 
too  exclusively  to  those  tasks  whereby  human  life  may  be  made 
more  abundant  and  wholesome  materially We  need  con 
stantly  to  be  reminded  that  spiritual  things  come  first. 

There  come  before  my  mental  eye  the  elegant  ladies 
and  gentlemen  for  whom  these  comfortable  sayings  are 
prepared :  the  vestrymen  and  pillars  of  the  Church,  with 
black  frock  coats  and  black  kid  gloves  and  shiny  top- 
hats  ;  the  ladies  of  Good  Society  with  their  Easter  cos 
tumes  in  pastel  shades,  their  gracious  smiles  and  their 
sweet  intoxicating  odors.  I  picture  them  as  I  have  seen 
them  at  St.  George's,  where  that  aged  wild  boar,  Pier- 
pont  Morgan,  the  elder,  used  to  pass  the  collection 
plate ;  at  Holy  Trinity,  where  they  drove  downtown  in 
^Id-fashioned  carriages  with  grooms  and  footmen  sit 
ting  like  twin  statues  of  insolence;  at  St.  Thomas', 


102  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

where  you  might  see  all  the  "Four  Hundred"  on  exhi 
bition  at  once ;  at  St.  Mary  the  Virgin's,  where  the  choir 
paraded  through  the  aisles,  swinging  costly  incense  into 
toy  childish  nostrils,  the  stout  clergyman  walking  alone 
With  nose  upturned,  carrying  on  his  back  a  jewelled 
robe  for  which  some  adoring  female  had  paid  sixty 
thousand  dollars.  "Spiritual  things  come  first?"  Ah, 
yes !  "Seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  the  jewelled 
robes  shall  be  added  unto  you !"  And  it  is  so  dreadful 
about  the  French  and  German  Socialists,  who,  as  the 
"Churchman"  reports,  "mako  a  creed  out  of  material 
ism."  But  then,  what  is  this  I  find  in  one  issue  of  the 
organ  of  the  "Church  of  Good  Society"? 

Business  men  contribute  to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  because  they 
realize  that  if  their  employes  are  well  cared  for  and  religiously 
influenced,  they  can  be  of  greater  service  in  business! 

Who  let  that  material  cat  out  of  the  spiritual  bag? 


BOOK  THREE 

The  Church  of  the  Servant-girls 

Was  it  for  this — that  prayers  like  these 
Should  spend  themselves  about  thy  feet, 

And  with  hard,  overlabored  knees 

Kneeling,  these  slaves  of  men  should  beat 

Bosoms  too  lean  to  suckle  sons 

And  fruitless  as  their  orisons  ? 

Was  it  for  this — that  men  should  make 
Thy  name  a  fetter  on  men's  necks, 

Poor  men  made  poorer  for  thy  sake, 
And  women  withered  out  of  sex  ? 

Was  it  for  this — that  slaves  should  be — 

Thy  word  was  passed  to  set  men  free? 

Swinburne. 


103 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  105 


Charity 

As  everyone  knows,  the  "society  lady"  is  not  an  in 
dependent  and  self-sustaining  phenomenon.  For  every 
one  of  these  exquisite,  sweet-smelling-  creatures  that 
you  meet  on  Fifth  Avenue,  there  must  be  at  home  a 
large  number  of  other  women  who  live  sterile  and 
empty  lives,  and  devote  themselves  to  cleaning  up  after 
their  luckier  sisters.  But  these  "domestics"  also  are 
human  beings;  they  have  emotions — or,  in  religious 
parlance,  "souls ;"  it  is  necessary  to  provide  a  discipline 
to  keep  them  from  appropriating  the  property  of  their 
mistresses,  also  to  keep  them  from  becoming  enceinte. 
So  it  comes  about  that  there  are  two  cathedrals  in  New 
York:  one,  St.  John  the  Divine,  for  the  society  ladies, 
and  the  other,  St.  Patrick's,  for  the  servant-girls.  The 
latter  is  located  on  Fifth  Avenue,  where  its  towering 
white  spires  divide  with  the  homes  of  the  Vanderbilts 
the  interest  of  the  crowds  of  sight-seers.  Now,  early 
every  Sunday  morning,  before  "Good  Society"  has  open 
ed  its  eyes,  you  may  see  the  devotees  of  the  Irish  snake- 
charmer  hurrying  to  their  orisons,  each  with  a  little 
black  prayer-book  in  her  hand.  What  is  it  they  do  in 
side?  What  are  they  taught  about  life?  This  is  the 
question  to  which  we  have  next  to  give  attention. 

Some  years  ago  Mr.  Thomas  F.  Ryan,  traction  and  in- 


106  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

surance  magnate  of  New  York,  favored  me  with  his  justi 
fication  of  his  own  career  and  activities.  He  mentioned 
his  charities,  and,  speaking  as  one  man  of  the  world  to 
another,  he  said :  "The  reason  I  put  them  into  the  hands 
of  Catholics  is  not  religious,  but  because  I  find  they  are 
efficient  in  such  matters.  They  don't  ask  questions,  they 
do  what  you  want  them  to  do,  and  do  it  economically." 

I  made  no  comment;  I  was  absorbed  in  the  implica 
tions  of  the  remark — like  Agassiz  when  some  one  gave 
him  a  fossil  bone,  and  his  mind  set  to  work  to  recon 
struct  the  creature. 

When  a  man  is  drunk,  the  Catholics  do  not  ask  if  it 
was  long  hours  and  improper  working-conditions  which 
drove  him  to  desperation;  they  do  not  ask  if  police  and 
politicians  are  getting  a  rake-off  from  the  saloon,  or  if 
traction  magnates  are  using  it  as  an  agency  for  the  con 
trolling  of  votes;  they  do  not  plunge  into  prohibition 
movements  or  good  government  campaigns — they  simply 
take  the  man  in,  at  a  standard  price,  and  the  patient 
slave-sisters  and  attendants  get  him  sober,  and  then  turn 
him  out  for  society  to  make  him  drunk  again.  That  is 
"charity,"  and  it  is  the  special  industry  of  Roman  Cathol 
icism.  They  have  been  at  it  for  a  thousand  years,  clean 
ing  up  loathsome  and  unsightly  messes — "plague,  pesti 
lence  and  famine,  battle  and  murder  and  sudden  death." 
Yet — puzzling  as  it  would  seem  to  anyone  not  religious 
— there  were  never  so  many  messes,  never  so  many  dif 
ferent  kinds  of  messes,  as  now  at  the  end  of  the  thousand 
years  of  charitable  activity! 

But  the  Catholics  go  on  and  on;  like  the  patient 
spider,  building  and  rebuilding  his  web  across  a  door- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  107 

way;  like  soldiers  under  the  command  of  a  ruling  class 
with  a  "muddling  through"  tradition — 

Theirs  not  to  reason  why, 
Theirs  but  to  do  and  die. 

And  so  of  course  all  magnates  and  managers  of  industry 
who  have  messes  to  be  cleaned  up,  human  garbage-heaps 
to  be  carted  away  quickly  and  without  fuss,  turn  to  the 
Catholic  Church  for  this  service,  no  matter  what  their 
personal  religious  beliefs  or  lack  of  beliefs  may  be.  Some 
where  in  the  neighborhood  of  every  steel-mill,  every 
coal-mine  or  other  place  of  industrial  danger,  you  will 
find  a  Catholic  hospital,  with  its  slave-sisters  and  attend 
ants.  Once  when  I  was  "muck-raking"  near  Pittsburgh, 
I  went  to  one  of  these  places  to  ask  information  as  to  the 
frequency  of  industrial  accidents  and  the  fate  of  the  vic 
tims.  The  "Mother  Superior"  received  me  with  a  look 
of  polite  dismay.  "These  concerns  pay  us!"  she  said. 
"You  must  see  that  as  a  matter  of  business  it  would  not 
do  for  us  to  talk  about  them." 

Obey  and  keep  silence :  that  is  the  Catholic  law.  And 
precisely  as  it  is  with  the  work  of  nursing  and  almsgiv 
ing,  so  it  is  with  the  work  of  vote-getting,  the  elaborate 
system  of  policemen  and  saloon-keepers  and  ward-heelers 
which  the  Catholic  machine  controls.  This  industry  of 
vote-getting  is  a  comparatively  new  one ;  but  the  Church 
has  been  handling  the  masses  for  so  many  centuries  that 
she  quickly  learned  this  new  way  of  "democracy,"  and 
has  established  her  supremacy  over  all  rivals.  She  has 
the  schools  for  training  the  children,  the  confessional  for 
controlling  the  women ;  she  has  the  intellectual  machin 
ery,  the  purgatory  and  the  code  of  slave-ethics.  She  has 
the  supreme  advantage  that  the  rank  and  file  of  her 


108  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

mighty  host  really  believe  what  she  teaches ;  they  do  not 
have  to  listen  to  table-rappings  and  flounder  through 
swamps,  of  automatic  writings  in  order  to  bolster  their 
hope  of  the  survival  of  personality  after  death ! 

So  it  comes  about  that  our  captains  of  industry  and 
finance  have  been  driven  to  a  more  or  less  reluctant  alli 
ance  with  the  Papacy.  The  Church  is  here,  and  her  fol 
lowers  are  here,  before  the  war  several  hundred  thousand 
of  them  pouring  into  the  country  every  year.  It  is  no 
longer  possible  to  do  without  Catholics  in  America;  not 
merely  do  ditches  have  to  be  dug,  roads  graded,  coal 
mined,  and  dishes  washed,  but  franchises  have  to  be 
granted,  tariff-schedules  adjusted,  juries  and  courts  man 
ipulated,  police  trained  and  strikes  crushed.  Under  our 
native  political  system,  for  these  purposes  millions  of 
votes  are  needed ;  and  these  votes  belong  to  people  of  a 
score  of  nationalities — Irish  and  German  and  Italian  and 
French-Canadian  and  Bohemian  and  Mexican  and  Portu 
guese  and  Polish  and  Hungarian.  Who  but  the  Catholic 
Church  can  handle  these  polyglot  hordes?  Who  can  fur 
nish  teachers  and  editors  and  politicians  familiar  with  all 
these  languages? 

Considering  how  complex  is  the  service,  the  price  13 
(extremely  moderate — the  mere  actual  expenses  of  the 
campaign,  the  cost  of  red  fire  and  torch-lights,  of  liquor 
and  newspaper  advertisements.  The  rest  may  come  out 
of  the  public  till,  in  the  form  of  exemption  from  taxation 
of  church  buildings  and  lands,  a  share  of  the  public  funds 
for  charities  and  schools,  the  control  of  the  police  for 
saloon-keepers  and  district  leaders,  the  control  of  police- 
courts  and  magistrates,  of  municipal  administrations  and 
boards  of  education,  of  legislatures  and  governors ;  with 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  109 

a  few  higher  offices  now  and  then,  to  flatter  our  sacred 
self-esteem,  a  senator  or  a  justice  on  the  Supreme  Court 
Bench ;  and  on  state  occasions,  to  keep  up  our  necessary 
prestige,  some  cabinet-members  and  legislators  and  jus 
tices  to  attend  High  Mass,  and  be  blessed  in  public  by 
Catholic  prelates  and  dignitaries. 

You  think  this  is  empty  rhetoric — you  comfortable, 
easy-going,  ultra-cultured  Americans?  You  professors  in 
your  classic  shades,  absorbed  in  "the  passionless  pursuit 
of  passionless  intelligence" — while  the  world  about  you 
slides  down  into  the  pit!  You  ladies  of  Good  Society, 
practicing  your  "sweet  little  charities,"  pursuing  your 
"dear  little  ideals,"  raising  your  families  of  one  or  two 
lovely  children — while  Irish  and  French-Canadians  and 
Italians  and  Portuguese  and  Hungarians  are  breeding 
their  dozens  and  scores,  and  preparing  to  turn  you  out  of 
your  country! 

God's  Armor 

You  remember  "Bishop  Blougram's  Apology," 
Browning's  study  of  the  psychology  of  a  modern  Cath 
olic  ecclesiastic.  He  is  not  unaware  of  modern  thought, 
this  bishop ;  he  is  a  man  of  culture,  who  wants  to  have 
beauty  about  him,  to  be  a  "cabin  passenger" : 

There's  power  in  me  and  will  to  dominate 
Which  I  must  exercise,  they  hurt  me  else; 
In  many  ways  I  need  mankind's  respect, 
Obedience,  and  the  love  that's  born  of  fear. 

He  wishes  that  he  had  faith — f aith  in  anything ;  he 
understands  that  faith  is  all-important — 
Enthusiasm's  the  best  thing,  I  repeat. 

But  you  cannot  get  faith  just  by  wishing  for  it — * 
But  paint  a  fire,  it  will  not  therefore  burn! 


110  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

He  tries  to  imagine  himself  going  on  a  crusade  for 
truth,  but  he  asks  what  there  would  be  in  it  for  him — 

State  the  facts, 

Read  the  text  right,  emancipate  the  world — 
The  emancipated  world  enjoys  itself 
With  scarce  a  thank-you.    Blougram  told  it  first 
It  could  not  owe  a  farthing, — not  to  him 
More  than  St.  Paul! 

So  the  bishop  goes  on  with  his  role,  but  uneasily 
conscious  of  the  contempt  of  intellectual  people. 

I  pine  among  my  million  imbeciles 

(You  think)  aware  some  dozen  men  of  sense 

Eye  me  and  know  me,  whether  I  believe 

In  the  last  winking  virgin  as  I  vow, 

And  am  a  fool,  or  disbelieve  in  her, 

And  am  a  knave. 

But,  as  he  says,  you  have  to  keep  a  tight  hold  upon 
the  chain  of  faith,  that  is  what 

Gives   all  the   advantage,  makes   the   difference, 
With  the  rough,  purblind  mass  we  seek  to  rule. 
We  are  their  lords,  or  they  are  free  of  us, 
Just  as  we  tighten  or  relax  that  hold. 

So  he  continues,  but  not  with  entire  satisfaction,  in 
his  role  of  shepherd  to  those  whom  he  calls  "King 
Bomba's  lazzaroni,"  and  "ragamuffin  saints." 

I  wander  into  a  Catholic  bookstore  and  look  to  see 
what  Bishop  Blougram  is  doing  with  his  lazzaroni  and 
his  ragamuffin  saints  here  in  this  new  country  of  the 
far  West.  It  is  easy  to  acquire  the  information,  for  the 
saleswoman  is  polite  and  the  prices  fit  my  purse.  Amer 
ica  is  going  to  war,  and  Catholic  boys  are  being  drafted 
to  be  trained  for  battle;  so  for  ten  cents  I  obtain  a 
firmly  bound  little  pamphlet  called  "God's  Armor,  a 
Prayer  Book  for  Soldiers."  It  is  marked  "Copyright  by 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  111 

the  G.  R.  C.  Central-Verein,"  and  bears  the  "Nihil  Ob- 
stat"  of  the  "Censor  Theolog."  and  the  "Imprimatur" 
of  "Johannes  Josephus,  Archiepiscopus  Sti.  Ludovici" 
— which  last  you  may  at  first  fail  to  recognize  as  a  well- 
known  city  on  the  Mississippi  River.  Do  you  not  feel 
the  spell  of  ancient  things,  the  magic  of  the  past  creep 
ing  over  you,  as  you  read  those  Latin  trade-marks? 
Such  is  the  Dead  Hand,  and  its  cunning,  which  can 
make  even  St.  Louis  sound  mysterious! 

In  this  booklet  I  get  no  information  as  to  the  com 
mercial  causes  of  war,  nor  about  the  part  which  the 
clerical  vote  may  have  played  throughout  Europe  in 
supporting  military  systems.  I  do  not  even  find  any 
thing  about  the  sacred  cause  of  democracy,  the  resolve 
of  a  self-governing  people  to  put  an  end  to  feudal  rule. 
Instead  I  discover  a  soldier-boy  who  obeys  and  keeps 
silent,  and  who,  in  his  inmost  heart,  is  in  the  grip  of 
terrors  both  of  body  and  soul.  Poor,  pitiful  soldier-boy, 
marking  yourself  with  crosses,  performing  genu 
flexions,  mumbling  magic  formulas  in  the  trenches — 
how  many  billions  of  you  have  been  led  out  to  slaughter 
by  the  greeds  and  ambitions  of  your  religious  masters, 
since  first  this  accursed  Antichrist  got  its  grip  upon  the 
hearts  of  men ! 

I  quote  from  this  little  book : 

Start  this  day  well  by  lifting  up  your  heart  to  God.  Offer 
yourself  to  Him,  and  beg  grace  to  spend  the  day  without  sin. 
Make  the  sign  of  the  cross.  Most  Holy  Trinity,  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost,  behold  me  in  Thy  Divine  Presence.  I  adore  Thee  and 
give  Thee  thanks.  Grant  that  all  I  do  this  day  be  for  Thy  Glory, 
and  for  the  salvation  of  my  immortal  soul. 

During  the  day  lift  your  heart  frequently  to  God.  Your 
prayers  need  not  be  long  nor  read  from  a  book.  Learn  a  few  of 


112  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

these  short  ejaculations  by  heart  and  frequently  repeat  them. 
They  will  serve  to  recall  God  to  your  heart  and  will  strengthen 
you  and  comfort  you. 

You  remember  a  while  back  about  the  prayer- 
wheels  of  the  Thibetans.  The  Catholic  religion  was 
founded  before  the  Thibetan,  and  is  less  progressive; 
it  does  not  welcome  mechanical  devices  for  saving  labor. 
You  have  to  use  your  own  vocal  apparatus  to  keep  your 
self  from  hell ;  but  the  process  has  been  made  as  eco 
nomical  as  possible  by  kindly  dispensations  of  the  Pope. 
Thus,  each  time  that  you  say  "My  God  and  my  all," 
you  get  fifty  days  indulgence ;  the  same  for  "My  Jesus, 
mercy/'  and  the  'same  for  "Jesus,  my  God,  I  love  Thee 
above  all  things."  For  "Jesus,  Mary,  Joseph,"  you  get 
three  hundred  days — which  would  seem  by  all  odds  the 
best  investment  of  your  spare  breath. 

And  then  come  prayers  for  all  occasions:  "Prayer 
before  Battle" ;  "Prayer  for  a  Happy  Death" ;  "Prayer 
in  Temptation" ;  "Prayer  before  and  after  Meals" ; 
"Prayer  when  on  Guard";  "Prayer  before  a  long 
March" ;  "Prayer  of  Resignation  to  Death" ;  "Prayer 
for  Those  in  their  Agony" — I  cannot  bear  to  read  them, 
hardly  to  list  them.  I  remember  standing  in  a  cathe 
dral  "somewhere  in  France"  during  the  celebration  of 
some  special  Big  Magic.  There  was  brilliant  white  light, 
and  a  suffocating  strange  odor,  and  the  thunder  of  a 
huge  organ,  and  a  clamor  of  voices,  high,  clear  voices  of 
young  boys  mounting  to  heaven,  like  the  hands  of  men 
in  a  pit  reaching  up,  trying  to  climb  over  the  top 
of  one  another.  It  sent  a  shudder  into  the  depths  of  my 
soul.  There  is  nothing  left  in  the  modern  world  which 
can  carry  the  mind  so  far  back  into  the  ancient  night 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  113 

mare  of  anguish  and  terror  which  was  once  the  mental 
life  of  mankind,  as  these  Roman  Catholic  incantations 
with  their  frantic  and  ceaseless  importunity.  They  have 
even  brought  in  the  sex-spell ;  and  the  poor,  frightened 
soldier-boy,  who  has  perhaps  spent  the  night  with  a 
prostitute,  now  prostrates  himself  before  a  holy  Wom 
an-being  who  is  lifted  high  above  the  shames  of  the 
flesh,  and  who  stirs  the  thrills  of  awe  and  affection 
which  his  mother  brought  to  him  in  early  childhood. 
Read  over  the  phrases  of  this  "Litany  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin": 

Holy  Mary,  Pray  for  us.  Holy  Mother  of  God.  Holy  Virgin 
of  Virgins.  Mother  of  Christ.  Mother  of  divine  grace.  Mother 
most  pure.  Mother  most  chaste.  Mother  inviolate.  Mother  un- 
defiled.  Mother  most  amiable.  Mother  most  admirable.  Mother 
of  good  counsel.  Mother  of  our  Creator.  Mother  of  our  Savior. 
Virgin  most  prudent.  Virgin  most  venerable.  Virgin  most  re 
nowned.  Virgin  most  powerful.  Virgin  most  merciful.  Virgin 
most  faithful.  Mirror  of  justice.  Seat  of  wisdom.  Cause  of  our 
joy.  Spiritual  vessel.  Vessel  of  honor.  Singular  vessel  of  devo 
tion.  Mystical  rose.  Tower  of  David.  Tower  of  ivory.  House 
of  gold.  Ark  of  the  covenant.  Gate  of  heaven.  Morning  Star. 
Health  of  the  sick.  Refuge  of  sinners.  Comforter  of  the  afflicted. 
Help  of  Christians.  Queen  of  Angels.  Queen  of  Patriarchs. 
Queen  of  Prophets.  Queen  of  Apostles.  Queen  of  Martyrs. 
Queen  of  Confessors.  Queen  of  Virgins.  Queen  of  all  Saints. 
Queen  conceived  without  original  sin.  Queen  of  the  most  holy 
Rosary.  Queen  of  Peace,  Pray  for  us. 

Thanksgivings 

For  another  five  cents — how  cheaply  a  man  of  in 
sight  can  obtain  thrills  in  this  fantastic  world ! — I  pur 
chase  a  copy  of  the  "Messenger  of  the  Sacred  Heart", 
a  magazine  published  in  New  York,  the  issue  for  Oc 
tober,  1917.  There  are  pages  of  advertisements  of 


114  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

schools  and  colleges  with  strange  titles:  "Immaculata 
Seminary",  "Holy  Cross  Academy",  "Holy  Ghost  In 
stitute",  "Ladycliff",  "Academy  of  Holy  Child  Jesus". 
The  leading  article  is  by  a  Jesuit,  on  "The  Spread  of  the 
Apostleship  of  Prayer  among  the  Young";  and  then 
"Sister  Clarissa"  writes  a  poem  telling  us  "What  are 
Sorrows" ;  and  then  we  are  given  a  story  called  "Prayer 
for  Daddy";  and  then  another  Jesuit  father  tells  us 
about  "The  Hills  that  Jesus  Loved".  A  third  father 
tells  us  about  the  "Eucharistic  Propaganda";  and  we 
learn  that  in  July,  1917,  it  distributed  11,699  beads, 
and  caused  the  expenditure  of  57,714  hours  of  adora 
tion;  and  then  the  faithful  are  given  a  form  of  letter 
which  they  are  to  write  to  the  Honorable  Baker,  Secre 
tary  of  War,  imploring  him  to  intimate  to  the  French 
government  that  France  should  withdraw  from  one  of 
her  advances  in  civilization,  and  join  with  mediaeval 
America  in  exempting  priests  from  being  drafted  to 
fight  for  their  country.  And  then  there  is  a  "Question 
Box" — just  like  the  Hearst  newspapers,  only  instead  of 
asking  whether  she  should  allow  him  to  kiss  her  before 
he  has  told  her  that  he  loves  her,  the  reader  asks  what 
is  the  Pauline  Privilege,  and  what  is  the  heroic  Act,  and 
is  Robert  a  saint's  name,  and  if  food  remains  in  the 
teeth  from  the  night  before,  would  it  break  the  fast  to 
swallow  it  before  Holy  Communion.  (No,  I  am  not  in 
venting  this.) 

I  quoted  the  Episcopal  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and 
pointed  out  how  deftly  the  Church  has  managed  to  slip 
in  a  prayer  for  worldly  prosperity.  But  the  Catholic 
Church  does  not  show  any  squeamishness  in  dealing 
with  its  "million  imbeciles",  its  "rough,  purblind  mass". 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  115 

There  is  a  department  of  the  little  magazine  entitled 
"Thanksgiving",  and  a  statement  at  the  top  that  "the 
total  number  of  Thanksgivings  for  the  month  is  2,143,- 
911."  I  am  suspicious  of  that,  as  of  German  reports  of 
prisoners  taken ;  but  I  give  the  statement  as  it  stands, 
not  going  through  the  list  and  picking  out  the  crudest, 
but  taking  them  as  they  come,  classified  by  states : 

GENERAL  FAVORS:  For  many  of  these  favors  Mass  and 
publication  were  promised,  for  others  the  Badge  of  Promoter's 
Cross  was  used,  for  others  the  prayers  of  the  Associates  had 
been  asked. 

Alabama — Jewelry  found,  relief  from  pain,  protection  during 
storm. 

Alaska — Safe  return,  goods  found. 

Arizona — Two  recoveries,  suitable  boarding  place,  illness 
averted,  safe  delivery. 

British  Honduras — Successful  operation. 

California — Seventeen  recoveries,  six  situations,  two  success 
ful  examinations,  house  rented,  stocks  sold,  raise  in  salary,  re 
turn  to  religious  duties,  sight  regained,  medal  won,  Baptism, 
preservation  from  disease,  contract  obtained,  success  in  business, 
hearing  restored,  Easter  duty  made,  happy  death,  automobile 
sold,  mind  restored,  house  found,  house  rented,  successful  jour 
ney,  business  sold,  quarrel  averted,  return  of  friends,  two  suc 
cessful  operations. 

And  for  all  these  miraculous  performances  the 
Catholic  machine  is  harvesting  the  price  day  by  day — 
harvesting  with  that  ancient  fervor  which  the  Latin 
poet  described  as  "auri  sacra  fames".  As  Christopher 
Columbus  wrote  from  Jamaica  in  1503:  "Gold  is  a 
wonderful  thing.  By  means  of  gold  we  can  even  get 
souls  into  Paradise." 

The  Holy  Roman  Empire 

The  system  thus  self -revealed  you  admit  is  appalling 


116  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

in  its  squalor ;  but  you  say  that  at  least  it  is  milder  and 
less  perilous  than  the  Church  which  burned  Giordano 
Bruno  and  John  Huss.  But  the  very  essence  of  the  Cath 
olic  Church  is  that  it  does  not  change ;  semper  eadem  is 
its  motto :  the  same  yesterday,  today  and  forever — the 
same  in  Washington  as  in  Rome  or  Madrid — the  same 
in  a  modern  democracy  as  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
Catholic  Church  is  not  primarily  a  religious  organiza 
tion;  it  is  a  political  organization,  and  proclaims  the 
fact,  and  defies  those  who  would  shut  it  up  in  the  re 
ligious  field.  The  Rev.  S.  B.  Smith,  a  Catholic  doctor  of 
divinity,  explains  in  his  "Elements  of  Ecclesiastical 
Law": 

Protestants  contend  that  the  entire  power  of  the  Church 
consists  in  the  right  to  teach  and  exhort,  but  not  in  the  right  to 
command,  rule,  or  govern;  whence  they  infer  that  she  is  not  a 
perfect  society  or  sovereign  state.  This  theory  is  false;  for  the 
Church,  as  was  seen,  is  vested  Jure  divino  with  power,  (1)  to 
make  laws;  (2)  to  define  and  apply  them  (potestas  judicialis); 
(3)  to  punish  those  who  violate  her  laws  (potestas  coercitiva). 

And  this  is  not  one  scholar's  theory,  but  the  formal 
and  repeated  proclamation  of  infallible  popes.  Here  is 
the  "Syllabus  of  Errors",  issued  by  Pope  Pius  IX,  Dec. 
8th,  1864,  declaring  in  substance  that 

The  state  has  not  the  right  to  leave  every  man  free  to  profess 
and  embrace  whatever  religion  he  shall  deem  true. 

It  has  not  the  right  to  enact  that  the  ecclesiastical  power 
shall  require  the  permission  of  the  civil  power  in  order  to  the 
exercise  of  its  authority. 

Then  in  the  same  Syllabus  the  rights  and  powers  of 
the  Church  are  affirmed  in  substance : 

She  has  the  right  to  require  the  state  not  to  leave  every  man 
free  to  profess  his  own  religion. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  117 

She  has  the  right  to  exercise  her  power  without  the  permis 
sion  or  consent  of  the  state. 

She  has  the  right  of  perpetuating  the  union  of  church  and 
state. 

She  has  the  right  to  require  that  the  Catholic  religion  shall 
be  the  only  religion  of  the  state,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others. 

She  has  the  right  to  prevent  the  state  from  granting  the 
public  exercise  of  their  own  worship  to  persons  immigrating 
from  it. 

She  has  the  power  of  requiring  the  state  not  to  permit  free 
expression  of  opinion. 

You  see,  the  Holy  Office  is  unrepentant  and  un- 
chastened.  You,  who  think  that  liberty  of  conscience 
is  the  basis  of  civilization,  ought  at  least  to  know  what 
the  Catholic  Church  has  to  say  about  the  matter.  Here 
is  Mgr.  Segur,  in  his  "Plain  Talk  About  Protestantism 
of  Today",  a  book  published  in  Boston  and  extensively 
circulated  by  American  Catholics : 

Freedom  of  thought  is  the  soul  of  Protestantism;  it  is  like 
wise  the  soul  of  modern  rationalism  and  philosophy.  It  is  one  of 
those  impossibilities  which  only  the  levity  of  a  superficial  reason 
can  regard  as  admissable.  But  a  sound  mind,  that  does  not  feed 
on  empty  words,  looks  upon  this  freedom  of  thought  only  as 
simply  absurd,  and,  what  is  more,  as  sinful. 

You  take  the  liberty  of  thinking,  nevertheless ;  you 
feel  safe  because  the  Law  will  protect  you.  But  do  you 
imagine  that  this  "Law"  applies  to  your  Catholic  neigh 
bors?  Do  you  imagine  that  they  are  bound  by  the  re 
straints  that  bind  you?  Here  is  Pope  Leo  XIII,  in  his 
Encyclical  of  1890 — and  please  remember  that  Leo  XIII 
was  the  beau  ideal  of  our  capitalist  statesmen  and  edi 
tors,  as  wise  and  kind  and  gentle-souled  a  pope  as  ever 
roasted  a  heretic.  He  says : 

If  the  laws  of  the  state  are  openly  at  variance  with  the  laws 
of  God — if  they  inflict  injury  upon  the  Church — or  set  at  naught 


US  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

the  authority  of  Jesus  Christ  which  is  vested  in  the  Supreme 
Pontiff,  then  indeed  it  becomes  a  duty  to  resist  them,  a  sin  to 
render  obedience. 

And  consider  how  many  fields  there  are  in  which  the 
laws  of  a  democratic  state  do  and  forever  must  contra 
vene  the  "laws  of  God"  as  interpreted  by  the  Catholic 
Church.  Consider  for  example,  that  the  Pope,  in  his  de 
cree  Ne  Temere,  has  declared  that  Catholics  who  are 
married  by  civil  authorities  or  by  Protestant  clergymen 
will  be  living  in  "filthy  concubinage" !  Consider,  in  the 
same  way,  the  problems  of  education,  burial,  prison  dis-, 
cipline,  blasphemy,  poor  relief,  incorporation,  mortmain, 
religious  endowments,  vows  of  celibacy.  To  the  above 
list,  as  given  by  Gladstone,  one  might  add  many  issues, 
such  as  birth  control,  which  have  arisen  since  his 
time. 

What  the  Church  means  is  to  rule.  Pier  literature  is 
full  of  expressions  of  that  intention,  set  forth  in  the 
boldest  and  haughtiest  and  most  uncompromising  man 
ner.  For  example,  Cardinal  Manning,  in  the  Pro-Cathe 
dral  at  Kensington,  speaking  in  the  name  of  the  Pope: 

I  acknowledge  no  civil  power;  I  am  the  subject  of  no  prince; 
I  claim  more  than  this — I  claim  to  be  the  supreme  judge  and 
director  of  the  consciences  of  men — of  the  peasant  that  tills  the 
field,  and  of  the  prince  that  sits  upon  the  throne;  of  the  house 
hold  of  privacy,  and  the  legislator  that  makes  laws  for  king 
doms;  I  am  the  sole,  last  supreme  judge  of  what  is  right  and 
wrong. 

Temporal  Power 

What  this  means  is,  that  here  in  our  American  de 
mocracy  the  Catholic  Church  is  a  rebel ;  a  prisoner  of 
war  who  bides  his  time,  watching  for  the  moment  to 
rise  in  revolt,  and  meantime  making  no  secret  of  his 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  119 

intentions.  The  pious  Leo  XIII,  addressing  all  true  be 
lievers  in  America,  instructed  them  as  to  their  attitude 
in  captivity: 

The  Church  amongst  you,  unopposed  by  the  Constitution  and 
government  of  your  nation,  fettered  by  no  hostile  legislation, 
protected  against  violence  by  the  common  laws  and  the  impar 
tiality  of  the  tribunals,  is  free  to  live  and  act  without  hindrance. 
Yet,  though  all  this  is  true,  it  would  be  very  erroneous  to  draw 
the  conclusion  that  in  America  is  to  be  sought  the  type  of  the 
most  desirable  status  of  the  church,  or  that  it  would  be  uni 
versally  lawful  or  expedient  for  state  and  church  to  be,  as  in 
America,  dissevered  and  divorced.  The  fact  that  Catholicity  with 
you  is  in  good  condition,  nay,  is  even  enjoying  a  prosperous 
growth,  is  by  all  means  to  be  attributed  to  the  fecundity  with 
which  God  has  endowed  His  Church ....  But  she  would  bring  forth 
more  abundant  fruits  if,  in  addition  to  liberty,  she  enjoyed  the 
favor  of  the  laws  and  patronage  of  the  public  authority. 

Accordingly,  here  is  Father  Phelan  of  St.  Louis,  ad 
dressing  his  flock  in  the  "Western  Watchman",  June 
27,1913: 

Tell  us  we  are  Catholics  first  and  Americans  or  Englishmen 
afterwards;  of  course  we  are.  Tell  us,  in  the  conflict  between  the 
church  and  the  civil  government  wre  take  the  side  of  the  church; 
of  course  we  do.  Why,  if  the  government  of  the  United  States 
were  at  war  with  the  church,  we  would  say  tomorrow,  To  hell 
with  the  government  of  the  United  States;  and  if  the  church 
and  all  the  governments  of  the  world  were  at  war,  we  would  say, 

To  hell  with  all  the  governments  of  the  world Why  is  it  that 

in  this  country,  where  we  have  only  seven  per  cent  of  the  popu 
lation,  the  Catholic  church  is  so  much  feared?  She  is  loved  by 
all  her  children  and  feared  by  everybody.  Why  is  it  that  the  Pope 
has  such  tremendous  power?  Why,  the  Pope  is  the  ruler  of  the 
world.  All  the  emperors,  all  the  kings,  all  the  princes,  all  the 
presidents  of  the  world,  are  as  these  altar  boys  of  mine.  The 
Pope  is  the  ruler  of  the  world. 

You  recall  what  I  said  at  the  outset  about  Power; 


120  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

the  abilH  y  to  control  the  lives  of  other  men,  to  give  laws 
and  moral  codes,  to  shape  fashions  and  tastes,  to  be  re 
vered  and  regarded.  Here  is  a  man  swollen  to  bursting 
with  this  Power.  Dressed  in  his  holy  robes,  with  his 
holy  incense  in  his  nostrils,  and  the  faces  of  the  faith 
ful  gazing  up  at  him  awe-stricken,  hear  him  proclaim : 

The  Church  gives  no  bonds  for  her  good  behavior.  She  is  the 
judge  of  her  own  rights  and  duties,  and  of  the  rights  and  duties 
of  the  state. 

And  lest  you  think  that  an  extreme  example  of 
ultramontanist  arrogance,  listen  to  the  Boston  "Pilot", 
April  6,  1912,  speaking  for  Cardinal  O'Connell,  whose 
official  organ  it  is : 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  even  though  Cardinals  Farley, 
O'Connell  and  Gibbons  are  at  heart  patriotic  Americans  and 
members  of  an  American  hierachy,  yet  they  are  as  cardinals 
foreign  princes  of  the  blood,  to  whom  the  United  States,  as  one 
of  the  great  powers  of  the  world,  is  under  an  obligation  to  con 
cede  the  same  honors  that  they  receive  abroad. 

Thus,  were  Cardinal  Farley  to  visit  an  American  man-of-war, 
he  would  be  entitled  to  the  salutes  and  to  naval  honors  reserved 
for  a  foreign  royal  personage,  and  at  any  official  entertainment 
at  Washington  the  Cardinal  will  outrank  not  merely  every  cab 
inet  officer,  the  speaker  of  the  house  and  the  vice-president, 
but  also  the  foreign  ambassadors,  coming  immediately  next  to 
the  chief  magistrate  himself. 

Incidentally,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  when  a  royal  person 
age  not  of  sovereign  rank  visits  New  York  it  is  his  duty  to  make 
the  first  call  on  Cardinal  Farley. 

Knights  of  Slavery 

Such  is  the  worldly  station  of  these  apostles  of  the 
lowly  Jesus.  And  what  is  their  attitude  towards  their 
brothers  in  God,  the  rank  and  file  of  the  membership, 
whose  pennies  grease  the  wheels  of  the  ecclesiastical 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  121 

machine  ?  His  Holiness,  the  Pope,  sent  over  a  delegate 
to  represent  him  in  America,  and  at  a  convention  of  the 
Federation  of  Catholic  Societies  held  in  New  Orleans  in 
November,  1910,  this  gentleman,  Diomede  Falconio,  de 
livered  himself  on  the  subject  of  Capital  and  Labor. 
We  have  heard  the  slave-code  of  the  Anglican  disciples 
of  Jesus,  the  revolutionary  carpenter;  now  let  us  hear 
the  slave-code  of  his  Roman  disciples: 

Human  society  has  its  origin  from  God  and  is  constituted 
of  two  classes  of  people,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  which  respectively 
represent  Capital  and  Labor. 

Hence  it  follows  that  according  to  the  ordinance  of  God, 
human  society  is  composed  of  superiors  and  subjects,  masters 
and  servants,  learned  and  unlettered,  rich  and  poor,  nobles  and 
plebeians. 

And  lest  this  should  not  be  clear  enough,  the  Pope 
sent  a  second  representative,  Mgr.  John  Bonzano,  who, 
speaking  at  a  general  meeting  of  the  German  Catholic 
Central- Verein,  St.  Louis,  1917,  declared : 

One  of  the  worst  evils  that  may  grow  out  of  the  European 
war  is  the  spreading  of  the  doctrine  of  Socialism,  and  the  Cath 
olic  Church  must  be  ready  to  counteract  such  doctrines.  We  must 
be  ready  to  prevent  the  spread  of  Socialism  and  to  work  against 
it.  As  I  understand,  you  have  a  society  of  wealthy  people  in  St. 
Louis  ready  for  such  a  campaign.  You  have  experienced  leaders 
who  are  masters  in  their  kind  of  work.  They  are  always  insistent 
to  show  that  this  wealth  was  and  is  in  close  touch  with  the 
Church,  and  therefore  it  will  not  fail. 

This,  you  perceive,  is  the  complete  thesis  of  the 
present  book,  which  therefore  no  doubt  will  be  entitled 
to  the  'Nihil  Obstat"  of  the  "Censor  Theolog.",  and  the 
"Imprimatur"  of  "Johannes  Josephus,  Archiepiscopus 
Sti.  Ludovici."  No  wonder  that  the  "experienced  lead 
ers"  of  America,  our  captains  of  industry  and  exploiters 


122  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

of  labor,  are  forced,  whatever  their  own  faith  may  be, 
to  make  use  of  this  system  of  subjection.  A  few  years 
ago  we  read  in  our  papers  how  a  Jewish  millionaire  of 
Baltimore  was  presenting  a  fortune  to  the  Catholic 
Church,  to  be  used  in  its  war  upon  Socialism.  The  late 
Mark  Hanna,  the  shrewdest  and  most  far-seeing  man 
that  Big  Business  ever  brought  into  power,  said  that 
in  twenty  years  there  would  be  two  parties  in  America, 
a  capitalist  and  a  socialist;  and  that  it  would  be  the 
Catholic  church  that  would  save  the  country  from 
Socialism.  That  prophecy  was  widely  quoted,  and  sank 
into  the  souls  of  our  steel  and  railway  and  money  mag 
nates  ;  from  which  time  you  might  see,  if  you  watched 
political  events,  a  new  tone  of  deference  to  the  Roman 
Hierarchy  on  the  part  of  our  ruling  classes.  Today  you 
cannot  get  an  expression  of  opinion  hostile  to  Cathol 
icism  into  any  newspaper  of  importance.  The  Associat 
ed  Press  does  not  handle  news  unfavorable  to  the 
Church,  and  from  top  to  bottom,  the  politician  takes  off 
his  hat  when  the  Sacred  Host  goes  by.  Said  Arch 
bishop  Quigley,  speaking  before  the  children  of  the 
Mary  Sodality : 

I'd  like  to  see  the  politician  who  would  try  to  rule  against 
the  church  in  Chicago.  His  reign  would  be  short  indeed. 

Priests  and  Police 

And  how  is  it  in  our  national  capital,  the  palladium 
of  our  liberties  ?  As  a  means  of  demonstrating  the  pow 
er  of  the  church  and  the  subservience  of  our  politicians, 
the  Catholics  have  invented  what  they  call  the  "Card 
inal's  Day  Mass" :  An  elaborate  procession  of  high  ec 
clesiastics,  dressed  in  gorgeous  robes  and  jewels, 
through  the  streets  of  Washington,  accompanied  by  a 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  123 

small  army  of  policemen,  paid  by  non-Catholic  tax 
payers.  The  Cardinal  seats  himself  upon  a  throne,  and 
our  political  rulers  make  obeisance  before  him.  On 
Sunday,  January  14,  1917,  there  were  present  at  this 
political  mass  the  following  personages :  Four  cabinet 
members  and  their  wives ;  the  speaker  of  the  House ;  a 
large  group  of  senators  and  representatives ;  a  general 
of  the  army  and  his  wife ;  an  admiral  of  the  navy  and 
his  wife ;  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  and 
his  wife,  and  another  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  and 
his  wife. 

And  understand  that  the  church  makes  no  secret  of 
its  purpose  in  conducting  such  public  exhibitions.  Here 
is  the  pious  Pope  Leo  XIII  again,  in  his  Encyclical  of 
Nov.  1,  1885: 

All  Catholics  must  make  themselves  felt  as  active  elements 
in  daily  political  life  in  the  countries  where  they  live.  They  must 
penetrate,  wherever  possible,  in  the  administration  of  civil  af 
fairs;  must  constantly  exert  the  utmost  vigilance  and  energy  to 
prevent  the  usages  of  liberty  from  going  beyond  the  limits  fixed 
by  God's  law.  All  Catholics  should  do  all  in  their  power  to  cause 
the  constitutions  of  states  and  legislation  to  be  modeled  on  the 
principles  of  the  true  Church. 

And  following  these  instructions,  the  Catholics  are 
organized  for  political  work.  There  are  the  various 
Catholic  Societies,  such  as  the  Knights  of  Columbus, 
secret,  oath-bound  organizations,  the  military  arm  of 
the  Papal  Power.  These  societies  boast  some  three  mil 
lion  members,  and  control  not  less  than  that  many 
votes.  The  one  thing  that  you  can  be  certain  about  these 
votes  is  that  on  every  public  question,  of  whatever  na 
ture,  they  will  be  cast  on  the  side  of  ignorance  and  re 
action.  Thus,  it  was  the  influence  of  the  Catholic  So- 


124  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

cieties  which  put  upon  our  national  statute  books  the 
infamous  law  providing  five  years  imprisonment  and 
five  thousand  dollars  fine  for  the  sending  through  the 
mail  of  information  about  the  prevention  of  concep 
tion.  It  is  their  influence  which  keeps  upon  the  statute- 
books  of  New  York  state  the  infamous  law  which  per 
mits  divorce  only  for  infidelity,  and  makes  it  "collusion" 
if  both  parties  desire  the  divorce.  It  is  these  societies 
which,  in  every  city  and  town  in  America,  are  pushing 
and  plotting  to  get  Catholics  upon  library  boards,  so 
that  the  public  may  not  have  a  chance  to  read  scientific 
books;  to  get  Catholics  into  the  public  schools  and  on 
school-boards,  so  that  children  may  not  hear  about 
Galileo,  Bruno,  and  Ferrer ;  to  have  Catholics  in  control 
of  police  and  on  magistrates  benches,  so  that  priests 
who  are  caught  in  brothels  may  not  be  exposed  or  pun 
ished. 

You  are  shocked  at  this,  you  think  it  a  vulgar  jest, 
perhaps;  but  during  a  period  of  "vice  raids"  in  New 
York  I  was  told  by  a  captain  of  police,  himself  a  Cath 
olic,  that  it  was  a  common  thing  for  them  to  get  priests 
in  their  net.  "Of  course,"  the  official  added,  good- 
naturedly,  "we  let  them  slip  out."  I  understood  that  he 
had  to  do  that ;  for  the  Pope,  in  his  "Motu  Proprio"  de 
cree,  has  forbidden  Catholics  to  bring  a  priest  into  court 
for  any  civil  crime  whatsoever ;  he  has  forbidden  Cath 
olic  policemen  to  arrest,  Catholic  judges  to  try,  and 
Catholic  law-makers  to  make  laws  affecting  any  priest 
of  the  Church  of  Rome.  And  of  course  we  know,  upon 
the  authority  of  a  cardinal,  that  the  Pope  is  "the  sole, 
last,  supreme  judge  of  what  is  right  and  wrong."  He 
has  held  that  position  for  a  thousand  years  and  more ; 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  125 

and  wherever  you  consult  the  police  records  throughout 
the  thousand  years,  you  find  the  same  entries  concern 
ing  Catholic  ecclesiastics.  I  turn  to  Riley's  "Illustra 
tions  of  London  Life  from  Original  Documents,"  and  I 
find  in  the  year  1385  a  certain  chaplain,  whose  name  is 
considerately  suppressed,  had  a  breviary  stolen  from 
him  by  a  loose  woman,  because  he  has  not  given  her  any 
money,  either  on  that  night  or  the  one  previous.  In 
1320  John  de  Sloghtre,  a  priest,  is  put  in  the  tower  "for 
being  found  wandering  about  the  city  against  the 
peace",  and  Richard  Keyring,  a  priest,  is  indicted  in  the 
ward  of  Farringdon  and  in  the  ward  of  Crepelgate  "as 
being  a  bruiser  and  nightwalker."  That  this  has  been 
going  on  for  six  hundred  years  is  due,  not  to  any  special 
corruption  of  the  Catholic  heart,  but  to  the  practice  of 
clerical  celibacy,  which  is  contrary  to  nature,  a  trans 
gression  of  fundamental  instinct.  It  should  be  noted 
that  the  purpose  of  this  transgression,  which  pretends 
to  be  spiritual,  is  really  economic;  it  was  the  means 
whereby  the  church  machine  built  up  its  power  through 
the  Middle  Ages.  The  priests  had  children  then,  as  they 
have  them  today;  but  these  children  not  being  recog 
nized,  the  church  machine  remained  the  sole  heir  of  the 
property  of  its  clergy. 

The  Church  Militant 

Knowing  what  we  know  today,  we  marvel  that  it 
was  possible  for  Germany  to  prepare  through  so  many 
years  for  her  assault  on  civilization,  and  for  England 
to  have  slept  through  it  all.  In  exactly  the  same  way, 
the  historian  of  a  generation  from  now  will  marvel  that 
America  should  have  slept,  while  the  New  Inquisition 
was  planning  to  strangle  her.  For  we  are  told  with  the 


126  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

utmost  explicitness  precisely  what  is  to  be  done.  We 
are  to  see  wiped  out  these  gains  of  civilization  for  which 
our  race  has  bled  and  agonized  for  many  centuries ;  the 
very  gains  are  to  serve  as  the  means  of  their  own  de 
struction  !  Have  we  not  heard  Pope  Leo  tell  his  faithful 
how  to  take  advantage  of  what  they  find  in  America — 
our  easy-going  trust,  our  quiet  certainty  of  liberty,  our 
open-handed  and  open-homed  and  hail-fellow-well-met 
democracy  ? 

We  see  the  army  being  organized  and  drilled  under 
our  eyes ;  and  we  can  read  upon  its  banners  its  purpose 
proclaimed.  Just  as  the  Prussian  military  caste  had  its 
slogan  "Deutschland  ueber  Alles!"  so  the  Knights  of 
Slavery  have  their  slogan :  "Make  America  Catholic !" 

Their  attitude  to  democratic  institutions  is  attested 
by  the  fact  that  none  of  their  conventions  ever  fails  in 
its  resolutions  to  "deeply  deplore  the  loss  of  the  tem 
poral  power  of  Our  Father,  the  Pope."  Their  subjec 
tion  to  priestly  domination  is  indicated  by  such  resolu 
tions  as  this,  bearing  date  of  May  13th,  1914  : 

The  Knights  of  Columbus  of  Texas  in  annual  convention  as 
sembled,  prostrate  at  the  feet  of  Your  Holiness,  present  filial 
regards  with  assurances  of  loyalty  and  obedience  to  the  Holy 
See  and  request  the  Papal  blessing. 

On  June  10th,  1912,  one  T.  J.  Carey  of  Palestine, 
Texas,  wrote  to  Archbishop  Bonzano,  the  Apostolic  Del 
egate:  "Must  I,  as  a  Catholic,  surrender  my  political 
freedom  to  the  Church  ?  And  by  this  I  mean  the  right 
to  vote  for  the  Democratic,  Socialist,  or  Republican 
parties  when  and  where  I  please?"  The  answer  was: 
"You  should  submit  to  the  decisions  of  the  Church,  even 
at  the  cost  of  sacrificing  political  principles."  And  to 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  127 

the  same  effect  Mgr.  Preston,  in  New  York  City,  Jan.  1, 
1888 :  "The  man  who  says,  'I  will  take  my  faith  from 
Peter,  but  I  will  not  take  my  politics  from  Peter/  is  not 
a  true  Catholic." 

Such  is  the  Papal  machine;  and  not  a  day  passes 
that  it  does  not  discover  some  new  scheme  to  advance 
the  Papal  glory ;  a  "Catholic  battle-ship"  in  the  United 
States  navy;  Catholic  chaplains  on  all  ships  of  the 
navy;  Catholic  holidays — such  as  Columbus  Day — to 
be  celebrated  by  all  Protestants  in  America;  thirty 
million  dollars  worth  of  church  property  exempted 
from  taxation  in  New  York  City ;  mission  bells  to  be  set 
up  at  the  expense  of  the  state  of  California ;  state  sup 
port  for  parish  schools — or,  if  this  cannot  be  had,  ex 
emption  of  Catholics  from  taxation  for  school  pur 
poses.  So  on  through  the  list  which  might  continue  for 
pages. 

More  than  anything  else,  of  course,  the  Papal  ma 
chine  is  concerned  with  education,  or  rather,  with  the 
preventing  of  education.  It  was  in  its  childish  days  that 
the  race  fell  under  the  spell  of  the  Priestly  Lie ;  it  is  in 
his  childish  days  that  the  individual  can  be  most  safely 
snared.  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  the  Catholic 
priest,  and  he  will  make  upon  their  sensitive  minds  an 
impression  which  nothing  in  after  life  can  eradicate. 
So  the  mainstay  of  the  New  Inquisition  is  the  parish- 
school,  and  its  deadliest  enemy  is  the  American  school 
system.  Listen  to  the  Rev.  James  Con  way,  of  the  So 
ciety  of  Jesus,  in  his  book,  "The  Rights  of  Our  Little 
Ones": 

Catholic  parents  cannot,  in  conscience,  send  their  children  to 


128  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGIOX 

American  public  schools,  except  for  very  grave  reasons  approved 
by  the  ecclesiastical  authorities. 

While  state  education  removes  illiteracy  and  puts  a  limited 
amount  of  knowledge  within  the  reach  of  all,  it  cannot  be  said 
to  have  a  beneficial  influence  on  civilization  in  general. 

The  state  cannot  justly  enforce  compulsory  education,  even 
in  case  of  utter  illiteracy,  so  long  as  the  essential  physical  and 
moral  education  are  sufficiently  provided  for. 

And  so,  at  all  times  and  in  all  places,  the  Catholic 
Church  is  fighting  the  public  school.  Eternal  vigilance 
is  necessary;  as  "America",  the  organ  of  the  Jesuits, 
explains : 

Sometimes  it  is  a  new  building  code,  or  an  attempt  at  taxing 
the  school  buildings,  which  creates  hardships  to  the  parochial 
and  other  private  schools.  Now  it  is  the  free  text  book  law  that 
puts  a  double  burden  on  the  Catholics.  Then  again  it  is  the 
unwise  extension  of  the  compulsory  school  age  that  forces  chil 
dren  to  be  in  school  until  they  are  16  to  18  years  old. 

And  if  you  wish  to  know  the  purpose  of  the  Catholic 
schools,  hear  Archbishop  Quigley  of  Chicago,  speaking 
before  the  children  of  the  Mary  Sodality  in  the  Holy 
Name  Parish-School : 

Within  twenty  years  this  country  is  going  to  rule  the  world. 
Kings  and  emperors  will  pass  away,  and  the  democracy  of  the 
United  States  will  take  their  place.  The  West  will  dominate  the 
country,  and  what  I  have  seen  of  the  Western  parochial  schools 
has  proved  that  the  generation  which  follows  us  will  be  ex 
clusively  Catholic.  When  the  United  States  rules  the  world  the 
Catholic  Church  will  rule  the  world. 

The  Church  Triumphant 

The  question  may  be  asked,  What  of  it?  What  if 
the  Church  were  to  rule  ?  There  are  not  a  few  Ameri 
cans  who  believe  that  there  have  to  be  rich  and  poor, 
and  that  rule  by  Roman  Catholics  might  be  preferable 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  129 

to  rule  by  Socialists.  Before  you  decide,  at  least  do  not 
fail  to  consider  what  history  has  to  tell  about  priestly 
government.  We  do  not  have  to  use  our  imaginations 
in  the  matter,  for  there  was  once  a  Golden  Age  such 
as  Archbishop  Quigley  dreams  of,  when  the  power  of 
the  church  was  complete,  when  emperors  and  princes 
paid  homage  to  her,  and  the  civil  authority  made  haste 
to  carry  out  her  commands.  What  was  the  condition  of 
the  people  in  those  times?  We  are  told  by  Lea,  in  his 
"History  of  the  Inquisition"  that : 

The  moral  condition  of  the  laity  was  unutterably  depraved. 
Uniformity  of  faith  had  been  enforced  by  the  Inquisition  and  its 
methods,  and  so  long  as  faith  was  preserved,  crime  and  sin  was 
comparatively  unimportant  except  as  a  source  of  revenue  to 
those  who  sold  absolution.  As  Theodoric  Vrie  tersely  puts  it, 
hell  and  purgatory  would  be  emptied  if  enough  money  could  be 
found.  The  artificial  standard  thus  created  is  seen  in  a  revela 
tion  of  the  Virgin  to  St.  Birgitta,  that  a  Pope  who  was  free 
from  heresy,  no  matter  how  polluted  by  sin  and  vice,  is  not  so 
wicked  but  that  he  has  the  absolute  power  to  bind  and  loose 
souls.  There  are  many  wicked  popes  plunged  in  hell,  but  all 
their  lawful  acts  on  earth  are  accepted  and  confirmed  by  God, 
and  all  priests  who  are  not  heretics  administer  true  sacraments, 
no  matter  how  depraved  they  may  be.  Correctness  of  belief  was 
thus  the  sole  essential;  virtue  was  a  wholly  subordinate  consider 
ation.  How  completely  under  such  a  system  religion  and  morals 
came  to  be  dissociated  is  seen  in  the  remarks  of  Pius  II,  that 
the  Franciscans  were  excellent  theologians,  but  cared  nothing 
about  virtue. 

This,  in  fact,  was  the  direct  result  of  the  system  of  perse 
cution  embodied  in  the  Inquisition.  Heretics  who  were  admitted 
to  be  patterns  of  virtue  were  ruthlessly  exterminated  in  the 
name  of  Christ,  while  in  the  same  holy  name  the  orthodox  could 
purchase  absolution  for  the  vilest  of  crimes  for  a  few  coins. 
When  the  only  unpardonable  offence  was  persistence  in  some 
trifling  error  of  belief,  such  as  the  poverty  of  Christ;  when  men 


130  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

had  before  them  the'  example  of  their  spiritual  guides  as  leaders 
in  vice  and  debauchery  and  contempt  of  sacred  things,  all  the 
sanctions  of  morality  were  destroyed  and  the  confusion  between 
right  and  wrong  became  hopeless.  The  world  has  probably  never 
seen  a  society  more  vile  than  that  of  Europe  in  the  fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries.  The  brilliant  pages  of  Froissart  fasci 
nate  us  with  their  pictures  of  the  artificial  courtesies  of  chival 
ry;  the  mystic  reveries  of  Rysbroek  and  of  Tauler  show  us  that 
spiritual  life  survived  in  some  rare  souls,  but  the  mass  of  the 
population  was  plunged  into  the  depths  of  sensuality  and  the 
most  brutal  oblivion  of  the  moral  law.  For  this  Alvaro  Pelayo 
tells  us  that  the  priesthood  were  accountable,  and  that,  in  com 
parison  with  them,  the  laity  were  holy.  What  was  that  state  of 
comparative  holiness  he  proceeds  to  describe,  blushing  as  he 
writes,  for  the  benefit  of  confessors,  giving  a  terrible  sketch 
of  universal  immorality  which  nothing  could  purify  but  fire  and 
brimstone  from  heaven.  The  chroniclers  do  not  often  pause  in 
their  narrations  to  dwell  on  the  moral  aspects  of  the  times,  but 
Meyer,  in  his  annals  of  Flanders,  under  date  of  1379,  tells  us 
that  it  would  be  impossible  to  describe  the  prevalence  every 
where  of  perjuries,  blasphemies,  adulteries,  hatreds,  quarrels, 
brawls,  murder,  rapine,  thievery,  robbery,  gambling,  whoredom, 
debauchery,  avarice,  oppression  of  the  poor,  rape,  drunkenness, 
and  similar  vices,  and  he  illustrates  his  statement  with  the  fact 
that  in  the  territory  of  Ghent,  within  the  space  of  ten  months, 
there  occurred  no  less  than  fourteen  hundred  murders  com 
mitted  in  the  bagnios,  brothels,  gambling-houses,  taverns,  and 
other  similar  places.  When,  in  1396,  Jean  sans  Peur  led  his 
Crusaders  to  destruction  at  Micopolis,  their  crimes  and  cynical 
debauchery  scandalized  even  the  Turks,  and  led  to  the  stern  re 
buke  of  Bajazet  himself,  who  as  the  monk  of  St.  Denis  admits 
was  much  better  than  his  Christian  foes.  The  same  writer, 
moralizing  over  the  disaster  at  Agincourt,  attributes  it  to  the 
general  corruption  of  the  nation.  Sexual  relations,  he  says,  were 
an  alternation  of  disorderly  lust  and  of  incest;  commerce  was 
nought  but  fraud  and  treachery;  avarice  withheld  from  the  Church 
her  tithes,  and  ordinary  conversation  was  a  succession  of  bias- 
phemies.  The  Church,  set  up  by  God  as  a  model  and  protector 
of  the  people,  was  false  to  all  its  obligations.  The  bishope, 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  131 

through  the  basest  and  most  criminal  of  motives,  were  habitual 
accepters  of  persons;  they  annointed  themselves  with  the  last 
essence  extracted  from  their  flocks,  and  there  was  in  them 
nothing  of  holy,  of  pure,  of  wise,  or  even  of  decent. 

God  in  the  Schools 

But  that,  you  may  say,  was  a  long  time  ago.  If  so, 
let  us  take  a  modern  country  in  which  the  Catholic 
Church  has  worked  its  will.  Until  recently,  Spain  was 
such  a  country.  Now  the  people  are  turning  against  the 
clerical  machine;  and  if  you  ask  why,  turn  to  Rafael 
Shaw's  "Spain  From  Within" : 

On  every  side  the  people  see  the  baleful  hand  of  the  Church, 
interfering  or  trying  to  interfere  in  their  domestic  life,  ordering 
the  conditions  of  employment,  draining  them  of  their  hard-won 
livelihood  by  trusts  and  monopolies  established  and  maintained  in 
the  interest  of  the  Religious  Orders,  placing  obstacles  in  the  way 
of  their  children's  education,  hindering  them  in  the  exercise  of 
their  constitutional  rights,  and  deliberately  ruining  those  of 
them  who  are  bold  enough  to  run  counter  to  priestly  dictation. 
Riots  suddenly  break  out  in  Barcelona;  they  are  instigated  by 
the  Jesuits.  The  country  goes  to  war  in  Morocco;  it  is  dragged 
into  it  solely  in  defense  of  the  mines  owned,  actually,  if  not 
ostensibly,  by  the  Jesuits.  The  consumes  cannot  be  abolished 
because  the  Jesuits  are  financially  interested  in  their  continu 
ance. 

We  have  read  the  statement  of  a  Jesuit  father,  that 
"the  state  cannot  justly  enforce  compulsory  education, 
even  in  case  of  utter  illiteracy."  How  has  that  doctrine 
worked  out  in  Spain?  There  was  an  official  investiga 
tion  of  school  conditions,  the  report  appearing  in  the 
"Heraldo  de  Madrid"  for  November,  1909.  In  1857 
there  had  been  passed  a  law  requiring  a  certain  num 
ber  of  schools  in  each  of  the  79  provinces:  this  re 
quirement  being  below  the  very  low  standards  prevail- 


*32  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

ing  at  that  time  in  other  European  countries.  Yet  in 
1909  it  was  found  that  only  four  provinces  had  the  re 
quired  number  of  elementary  schools,  and  at  the  rate 
of  increase  then  prevailing  it  would  have  taken  150 
years  to  catch  up.  Seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  popula 
tion  were  wholly  illiterate,  and  30,000  towns  and  vil 
lages  had  no  government  schools  at  all.  The  govern 
ment  owed  nearly  a  million  and  a  half  dollars  in  unpaid 
salaries  to  the  teachers.  The  private  schools  were  near 
ly  all  "nuns'  schools",  which  taught  only  needle-work 
and  catechism;  the  punishments  prevailing  in  them 
were  "cruel  and  disgusting." 

As  to  the  location  of  the  schools,  a  report  of  the 
Minister  of  Education  to  the  Cortes,  the  Parliament  of 
Spain,  sets  forth  as  follows : 

More  than  10,000  schools  are  on  hired  premises,  and  many 
of  these  are  absolutely  destitute  of  hygienic  conditions.  There 
are  schools  mixed  up  with  hospitals,  with  cemeteries,  with 
slaughter  houses,  with  stables.  One  school  forms  the  entrance  to 
a  cemetery,  and  the  corpses  are  placed  on  the  master's  table 
while  the  last  responses  are  being  said.  There  is  a  school  into 
which  the  children  cannot  enter  until  the  animals  have  been  sent 
out  to  pasture.  Some  are  so  small  that  as  soon  as  the  warm 
weather  begins  the  boys  faint  for  want  of  air  and  ventilation. 
One  school  is  a  manure-heap  in  process  of  fermentation,  and  one 
of  the  local  authorities  has  said  that  in  this  way  the  children  are 
warmer  in  winter.  One  school  in  Cataluna  adjoins  the  prison. 
Another,  in  Andalusia,  is  turned  into  an  enclosure  for  the  bulls 
when  there  is  a  bull-fight  in  the  town. 

These  conditions  excited  the  indignation  of  a  Span 
ish  educator  by  the  name  of  Francesco  Ferrer.  He 
founded  what  he  called  a  "modern  school",  in  which  the 
pupils  should  be  taught  science  and  common  sense.  He 
drew,  of  course,  the  bitter  hatred  of  the  Catholic  hier- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  133 

archy,  which  saw  in  the  spread  of  his  principles  the 
end  of  their  mastery  of  the  people.  When  the  Barce 
lona  insurrection  took  place,  they  had  Ferrer  seized 
upon  a  charge  of  having  been  its  instigator ;  they  had 
him  tried  in  secret  before  a  military  tribunal,  convicted 
upon  forged  documents,  and  shot  beneath  the  walls  of 
the  fortress  of  Montjuich.  The  case  was  thoroughly  in 
vestigated  by  William  Archer,  one  of  England's  leading 
critics,  a  man  of  scrupulous  rectitude  of  mind.  His  con 
clusion  is  that  Ferrer  was  absolutely  innocent  of  the 
charges  against  him,  and  that  his  execution  was  the 
result  of  a  clerical  plot.  Of  Ferrer's  character  Archer 
writes : 

Fragmentary  though  they  be,  the  utterances  which  I  have 
quoted  form  a  pretty  complete  revelation.  From  first  to  last  we 
see  in  him  an  ardent,  uncompromising,  incorruptible  idealist. 
His  ideals  are  narrow,  and  his  devotion  to  them  fanatical;  but 
it  is  devoid,  if  not  of  egoism,  at  any  rate  of  self-interest  and 
self-seeking.  As  he  shrank  from  applying  the  money  entrusted 
him  to  ends  of  personal  luxury,  so  also  he  shrank  from  making 
his  ideas  and  convictions  subserve  any  personal  ambition  or 
vanity. 

The  Menace 

There  are,  of  course,  many  people  in  America  who 
will  not  rest  idle  while  their  country  falls  into  the  con 
dition  of  Spain.  There  are  anti-Catholic  propaganda 
societies,  which  send  out  lecturers  to  discuss  the  Church 
and  its  records ;  and  this  is  exasperating  to  devout  be 
lievers,  who  regard  the  Church  as  holy,  and  any  criti 
cism  of  it  as  blasphemy.  So  we  have  opportunity  to 
observe  the  working  out  of  the  doctrine  that  the  Church 
is  superior  to  the  civil  law. 

On  June  12th,  1913,  there  came  to  the  little  town  of 


134  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Oelwein,  Iowa,  a  former  priest  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
named  Jeremiah  J.  Crowley,  to  deliver  a  lecture  expos 
ing  the  Papal  propaganda.  The  Catholics  of  the  town 
made  efforts  to  intimidate  the  owner  of  the  place  in 
which  the  lecture  was  to  be  given;  the  priest  of  the 
town,  Father  O'Connor,  preached  a  sermon  furiously 
denouncing  the  lecturer ;  and  after  the  lecture  the  un 
fortunate  Crowley  was  surrounded  by  a  mob  of  men, 
women  and  boys,  and  although  he  was  six  feet  three  in 
size,  he  was  beaten  almost  to  death.  At  the  trial  which 
followed  it  developed  that  Father  O'Connor  and  also 
his  brother,  a  judge  on  the  Superior  Bench,  were  ac 
cessories  before  the  fact. 

Nor  is  this  a  solitary  instance.  The  Catholic  mili 
tary  societies,  with  their  uniforms  and  their  armories, 
are  not  maintained  for  nothing.  As  Archbishop  Quig- 
ley  declared  before  the  German  Catholic  Central  Verein : 

We  have  well  ordered  and  efficient  organizations,  all  at  the 
beck  and  nod  of  the  hierarchy  and  ready  to  do  what  the  church 
authorities  tell  them  to  do.  With  these  bodies  of  loyal  Catholics 
ready  to  step  into  the  breach  at  any  time  and  present  an  un 
broken  front  to  the  enemy  we  may  feel  secure. 

And  so,  on  the  evening  of  April  15th,  1914,  a  group 
of  Catholics  entered  the  Pierce  Hotel  in  Denver,  Colo 
rado,  overpowered  a  police  guard  and  seized  the  Rev. 
Otis  L.  Spurgeon,  an  anti-Catholic  lecturer.  They  bound 
and  gagged  him,  took  him  to  a  lonely  woods,  and  beat 
him  to  insensibility.  The  same  thing  happened  to  the 
Rev.  Augustus  Barnett,  at  Buffalo;  the  Rev.  William 
Black  was  killed  at  Marshall,  Texas.  In  each  case  the 
assailants  avowed  themselves  Knights  of  Columbus, 
efforts  to  punish  them  failed,  because  no  jury  can 


THE  PROFITS   OF  RELIGION  135 

be  got  to  convict  a  Catholic,  fighting  for  his  Pope 
against  a  godless  state.  The  most  pious  Leo  XIII  has 
laid  down : 

It  is  an  impious  deed  to  break  the  laws  of  Jesus  Christ  for 
the  purpose  of  obeying  the  magistrates,  or  to  transgress  the 
law  of  the  Church  under  the  pretext  of  observing  the  civil  law. 

There  are  papers  published  to  warn  Americans 
against  the  plotting  of  this  political  Church.  One  of 
them,  "The  Menace,"  has  a  circulation  of  more  than  a 
million;  and  naturally  the  Knights  of  Slavery  do  not 
enjoy  reading  it.  Year  after  year  they  have  marshalled 
their  power  to  have  this  paper  barred  from  the  mails — 
so  far,  in  vain.  They  caused  an  obscenity  prosecution, 
which  failed;  so  finally  the  press  rooms  of  the  paper 
were  blown  up  with  dynamite.  At  the  present  time 
there  is  a  "Catholic  Truth  Society"  with  a  publication 
called  "Truth",  to  oppose  the  anti-Catholic  campaign; 
and  that  is  all  right,  of  course — except  when  the  agents 
who  collect  the  two-dollar  subscriptions  to  this  publica 
tion  make  use  of  Untruth  in  their  labors — promising 
absolution  and  salvation  to  the  families,  dead  and  liv 
ing,  of  those  who  "come  across"  with  subscriptions.  In 
the  "Bulletin  of  the  American  Federation  of  Catholic 
Societies"  for  September,  1915,  I  find  a  record  of  the 
ceaseless  plotting  to  bar  criticism  of  the  Catholic 
Church  from  the  mails.  Fitzgerald,  a  Tammany  Cath 
olic  congressman,  proposes  a  bill  in  Washington;  and 
Judge  St.  Paul,  of  New  Orleans,  a  member  of  the  Fed 
eration's  "law  committee",  points  out  the  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  such  legislation.  You  cannot  pass  a  law 
against  ridiculing  religion,  because  the  Catholics  want 
to  ridicule  Christian  Science,  Mormonism,  and  the 


136  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

"Holy  Ghost  and  Us"  Society!  The  Judge  thinks  the 
purpose  of  the  Papal  plotters  will  be  accomplished  if 
they  can  slip  into  the  present  law  the  words  "scurrilous 
and  slanderous" ;  he  hopes  that  this  much  can  be  done 
without  the  American  people  catching  on ! 

You  read  these  things  for  the  first  time,  perhaps, 
and  you  want  to  start  an  American  "Kultur-kampf ."  I 
make  haste,  therefore,  to  restate  the  main  thesis  of  this 
book.  It  is  not  the  New  Inquisition  which  is  our  enemy 
today ;  it  is  hereditary  Privilege.  It  is  not  Superstition, 
but  Big  Business  which  makes  use  of  Superstition  as  a 
wolf  makes  use  of  sheep's  clothing. 

You  remember  how,  when  Americans  first  awak 
ened  to  the  universal  corruption  of  our  politics,  we  used 
to  attribute  it  to  the  "ignorant  foreign  vote."  Turn  to 
Lecky's  "Democracy  and  Liberty"  and  you  will  see  how 
reformers  twenty  years  ago  explained  our  political  de 
pravity.  But  we  probed  deeper,  and  discovered  that  the 
purely  American  communities,  such  as  Rhode  Island, 
were  the  most  corrupt  of  all.  It  dawned  upon  us  that 
wherever  there  was  a  political  boss  paying  bribes  on 
election  day,  there  was  a  captain  of  industry  furnishing 
the  money  for  the  bribes,  and  taking  some  public  priv 
ilege  in  return.  So  we  came  to  realize  that  political  cor 
ruption  is  merely  a  by-product  of  Big  Business. 

And  when  we  come  to  probe  this  problem  of  the 
spread  of  Supersition  in  America,  this  amazing  renas 
cence  of  Romanism  in  a  democracy,  we  find  precisely 
the  same  phenomenon.  It  is  not  the  poor  foreigner  who 
troubles  us.  Our  human  magic  would  win  him — our 
easy-going  trust,  our  quiet  certainty  of  liberty,  our 
open-handed  and  open-homed  and  hail-fellow-well-met 


THE  PROFITS   OF  RELIGION  137 

democracy.  We  should  break  down  the  Catholic  ma 
chine,  and  not  all  the  priests  in  the  hierarchy  could  stop 
us — were  it  not  for  the  Steel  Trust  and  the  Coal  Trust 
and  the  Beef  Trust,  the  Liquor  Trust  and  the  Traction 
Trust  and  the  Money  Trust — those  masters  of  America 
who  do  not  want  citizens,  free  and  intelligent  and  self- 
governing,  but  who  want  the  slave-hordes  as  they  come, 
ignorant,  inert,  physically,  mentally  and  morally  help 
less! 

No,  do  not  let  yourself  be  lured  into  a  Kultur-kampf . 
It  is  not  the  pennies  of  the  servant-girls  which  build 
the  towering  cathedrals ;  it  is  not  the  two-dollar  contri 
butions  for  the  salvation  of  souls  which  support  the 
Catholic  Truth  Society  and  the  Knights  of  Columbus 
and  the  Holy  Name  Society  and  the  Mary  Sodality  and 
the  National  Shrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  machinery  of  the  Papal  propaganda. 
These  help,  of  course ;  but  the  main  sources  of  growth 
are,  first,  the  subsidies  of  industrial  exploiters,  the  ma 
jority  of  whom  are  non-Catholic,  and  second,  the  priv 
ilege  of  public  plunder  granted  as  payment  for  votes 
by  politicians  who  are  creatures  and  puppets  of  Big 
Business. 

King  Coal 

The  proof  of  these  statements  is  written  all  over 
the  industrial  life  of  America.  I  will  stop  long  enough 
to  present  an  account  of  one  industry,  asking  the  read 
er  to  accept  my  statement  that  if  space  permitted  I 
could  present  the  same  sort  of  proof  for  a  dozen  other 
industries  which  I  have  studied — the  steel-mills  of 
Western  Pennsylvania,  the  meat-factories  of  Chicago, 
the  glass-works  of  Southern  Jersey,  the  silk-mills  of 


138  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Paterson,  the  cotton-mills  of  North  Carolina,  the  wool 
en-mills  of  Massachusetts,  the  lumber-camps  of  Louisi 
ana,  the  copper-mines  of  Michigan,  the  sweat-shops  of 
New  York. 

In  a  lonely  part  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  lies  a  group 
of  enormously  valuable  coal-mines  owned  by  the  Rocke 
fellers  and  other  Protestant  exploiters.  The  men  who 
work  these  mines,  some  twelve  or  fifteen  thousand  in 
number,  come  from  all  the  nations  of  Europe  and  Asia, 
and  their  fate  is  that  of  the  average  wage-slave.  I  do 
not  ask  anyone  to  take  my  word,  but  present  sworn 
testimony,  taken  by  the  United  States  Commission  on 
Industrial  Relations  in  1914.  Here  is  the  way  the  Ital 
ian  miners  live,  as  described  in  a  doctor's  report : 

Houses  up  the  canyon,  so-called,  of  which  eight  are  habitable, 
and  forty-six  simply  awful;  they  are  disreputably  disgraceful. 
I  have  had  to  remove  a  mother  in  labor  from  one  part  of  -the 
shack  to  another  to  keep  dry. 

And  here  is  the  testimony  of  the  Rev.  Eugene  S. 
Gaddis,  former  superintendent  of  the  Sociological  De 
partment  of  the  Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron  Company : 

The  C.  F.  &  I.  Company  now  own  and  rent  hovels,  shacks 
and  dug-outs  that  are  unfit  for  the  habitation  of  human  beings 
and  are  little  removed  from  the  pig-sty  make  of  dwellings.  And 
the  people  in  them  live  on  the  very  level  of  a  pig-sty.  Frequent 
ly  the  population  is  so  congested  that  whole  families  are  crowded 
into  one  room;  eight  persons  in  one  small  room  was  reported 
during  the  year. 

And  here  is  what  this  same  clergyman  has  to  say 
about  the  bosses  whom  the  Rockefellers  employ : 

The  camp  superintendents  as  a  whole  impressed  me  as  most 
uncouth,  ignorant,  immoral,  and  in  many  instances,  the  most 
brutal  set  of  men  that  I  have  ever  met.  Blasphemous  bullies. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  139 

Sometimes  the  miner  grows  tired  of  being  robbed  of 
his  weights,  and  applies  for  the  protection  which  the 
law  of  the  state  allows  him.  What  happens  then? 

"When  a  man  asked  for  a  checkweighman,  in  the  language 
of  the  super  he  was  getting  too  smart." 
"And  he  got  what?" 
"He  got  it  in  the  neck,  generally." 

And  when  these  wage-slaves,  goaded  beyond  en 
durance,  went  on  strike,  in  the  words  of  the  Commis 
sion's  report : 

Five  strikers,  one  boy,  and  thirteen  women  and  children  in 
the  strikers'  tent  colony  were  shot  to  death  by  militiamen  and 
guards  employed  by  the  coal  companies,  or  suffocated  and  burned 
to  death  when  these  militiamen  and  guards  set  fire  to  the  tents 
in  which  they  made  their  homes. 

And  now,  what  is  the  position  of  education  in  such 
camps  ?  The  Rev.  James  McDonald,  a  Methodist  preach 
er,  testified  that  the  school  building  was  dilapidated 
and  unfit.  One  year  there  were  four  teachers,  the  next 
three,  and  the  next  only  two.  The  teacher  of  the  pri 
mary  grade  had  a  hundred  and  twenty  children  en 
rolled,  ninety  per  cent  of  whom  could  not  speak  a  word 
of  English. 

Every  little  bench  was  seated  with  two  or  three.  It  was  over 
crowded  entirely,  and  she  could  hardly  get  walking  room  around 
there. 

And  as  to  the  political  use  made  of  this  deliberately 
cultivated  ignorance,  former  United  States  Senator 
Patterson  testified  that  the  companies  controlled  all 
elections  and  all  nominations: 

Election  returns  from  the  two  or  three  counties  in  which  the 
large  companies  operate  show  that  in  the  precincts  in  which  the 


140  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

mining  camps  are  located  the  returns  are  nearly  unanimous  in 
favor  of  the  men  or  measures  approved  by  the  companies,  re 
gardless  of  party. 

And  now  comes  the  all-important  question.  What 
of  the  Catholic  Church  and  these  evils?  The  majority 
of  these  mine-slaves  are  Catholics,  it  is  this  Church 
which  is  charged  with  their  protection.  There  are 
priests  in  every  town,  and  in  nearly  every  camp.  And 
do  we  find  them  lifting  their  voices  in  behalf  of  the 
miners,  protesting  against  the  starving  and  torturing 
of  thirty  or  forty  thousand  human  beings  ?  Do  we  find 
Catholic  papers  printing  accounts  of  the  Ludlow  mas 
sacre?  Do  we  find  Catholic  journalists  on  the  scene  re 
porting  it,  Catholic  lawyers  defending  the  strikers, 
Catholic  novelists  writing  books  about  their  troubles? 
We  do  not ! 

Through  the  long  agony  of  the  fourteen  months 
strike,  I  know  of  just  one  Catholic  priest,  Father  Le 
Fevre,  who  had  a  word  to  say  for  the  strikers.  One  of 
the  first  stories  I  heard  when  I  reached  the  strike-field 
was  of  a  priest  who  had  preached  on  the  text  that  "Idle 
ness  is  the  root  of  all  evil,"  and  had  been  reported  as  a 
"scab"  and  made  to  shut  up.  "Who  made  him  ?"  I  asked, 
naively,  thinking  of  his  church  superiors.  My  inform 
ant,  a  union  miner,  laughed.  "We  made  him !"  he  said. 

I  talked  with  another  priest  who  was  prudently  sav 
ing  souls  and  could  not  be  interested  in  questions  of 
worldly  greed.  Max  Eastman,  reporting  the  strike  in 
the  "Masses",  tells  of  an  interview  with  a  Catholic  sis 
ter. 

"Has  the  Church  done  anything  to  try  to  help  these  people, 
or  to  bring  about  peace?"  we  asked.  "I  consider  it  the  most 
useless  thing  in  the  \vorld  to  attempt  it,"  she  replied. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  141 

The  investigating  committee  of  Congress  came  to 
the  scene,  and  several  clergymen  of  the  Protestant 
Church  appeared  and  bore  testimony  to  the  outrages 
which  were  being  committed  against  the  strikers ;  but 
of  all  the  Catholic  priests  in  the  district  not  one  ap 
peared — not  one!  Several  Protestant  clergymen  testi 
fied  that  they  had  been  driven  from  the  coal-camps — 
not  because  they  favored  the  unions,  but  because  the 
companies  objected  to  having  their  workers  educated  at 
all ;  but  no  one  ever  heard  of  the  Catholic  Church  hav 
ing  trouble  with  the  operators.  To  make  sure  on  this 
point  I  wrote  to  a  former  clergyman  of  Trinidad  who 
watched  the  whole  strike,  and  is  now  a  first  lieutenant 
in  the  First  New  Mexico  Inf antrj~.  He  answered : 

The  Catholic  Church  seemed  to  get  along  with  the  companies 
very  cordially.  The  Church  was  permitted  in  all  the  camps.  The 
impression  was  abroad  that  this  was  due  to  favoritism.  I  honor 
what  good  the  Church  does,  but  I  know  of  no  instance,  during 
the  Colorado  coal-strike  or  at  any  other  time  or  place,  when 
the  Catholic  Church  has  taken  any  special  interest  in  the  cause  of 
the  laboring  men.  Many  Catholics,  especially  the  men,  quit  the 
church  during  the  coal-strike. 

The  Unholy  Alliance 

Everywhere  throughout  America  today  the  ulti 
mate  source  of  all  power,  political,  social,  and  religious, 
is  economic  exploitation.  To  all  other  powers  and  all 
other  organizations  it  speaks  in  these  words:  "Help 
us,  and  you  will  thrive ;  oppose  us,  and  you  will  be  de 
stroyed."  It  has  spoken  to  the  Catholic  Church,  for 
sixteen  hundred  years  the  friend  and  servant  of  every 
ruling  class ;  and  the  Church  has  hastened  to  fit  itself 
into  the  situation,  continuing  its  pastoral  role  as  shep 
herd  to  the  wage-slave  vote. 


142  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

In  New  York  and  Boston  and  Chicago  the  Church 
is  "Democratic" ;  so  in  the  Elaine  campaign  it  was  pos 
sible  for  a  Republican  clergyman  to  describe  the  issue 
as  "Rum,  Romanism  and  Rebellion."  But  the  Holy  Of 
fice  was  shrewd  and  socially  ambitious,  and  the  Grand 
Old  Party  was  desperately  in  need  of  votes,  so  under 
the  regime  of  Mark  Hanna,  the  President-Maker,  there 
began  a  rapprochement  between  Big  Business  and  the 
New  Inquisition.  Under  Hanna  the  Catholic  Church 
got  representation  in  the  Cabinet ;  under  him  the  Card 
inal's  Mass  became  a  government  institution,  a  Cath 
olic  College  came  to  the  fore  in  Washington,  and  Cath 
olic  prelates  were  introduced  in  the  role  of  eminent  pub 
licists,  their  reactionary  opinions  on  important  ques 
tions  being  quoted  with  grave  solemnity  by  a  prosti 
tute  press.  It  was  Mark  Hanna  himself  who  founded 
the  National  Civic  Federation,  upon  whose  executive 
committee  Catholic  cardinals  and  archbishops  might 
work  hand  in  glove  with  Catholic  labor-leaders  for  the 
chloroforming  of  the  American  working-class.  Hanna's 
biographer  naively  calls  attention  to  the  President- 
maker's  popularity  among  Catholics,  high  and  low,  and 
the  support  they  gave  him.  "Archbishop  Ireland  was 
in  frequent  correspondence  with  him,  and  used  his  in 
fluence  in  Mr.  Hanna's  behalf." 

And  this  tradition,  begun  under  Hanna,  was  con 
tinued  under  Roosevelt^  and  reached  its  finest  flower  in 
the  days  of  Taft,  the  most  pliant  tool  of  the  forces  of 
evil  who  has  occupied  the  White  House  since  the  days 
of  the  Slave  Power.  President  Taft  was  himself  a  Uni 
tarian;  yet  it  was  under  his  administration  that  the 
Catholic  Church  achieved  one  of  its  dearest  ambitions, 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  143 

and  broke  into  the  Supreme  Court.  Why  not?  We  can 
imagine  the  powers  of  the  time  in  conference.  It  is  de 
sired  to  pack  the  Court  against  the  possibility  of  prog 
ress  ;  it  is  desired  to  find  men  who  will  stand  like  a  rock 
against  change — and  who  better  than  those  who  have 
been  trained  from  childhood  in  the  idea  of  a  divine 
sanction  for  doctrine  and  morals  ?  After  all,  what  is  it 
that  Hereditary  Privilege  wants  in  America  ?  A  Roman 
Catholic  code  of  property  rights,  with  a  supreme  trib 
unal  to  play  the  part  of  an  infallible  Pope ! 

Under  this  Taft  administration  the  country  was 
governed  by  the  strangest  legislative  alliance  our  his 
tory  ever  saw;  a  combination  of  the  Old  Guard  of  the 
Republican  Party  with  the  leaders  of  the  Tammany 
Democracy  of  New  York.  "Bloody  shirt"  Foraker,  sen 
ator  from  Ohio,  voting  with  the  sons  of  those  Irish 
Catholic  mob-leaders  whom  the  Federal  troops  shot 
down  in  the  draft-riots !  By  this  unholy  combination  a 
pledge  to  reduce  the  tariff  was  carried  out  by  a  bill 
which  greatly  increased  its  burdens ;  by  this  combina 
tion  the  public  lands  and  resources  of  the  country  were 
fed  to  a  gang  of  vultures  by  a  thievish  Secretary  of 
the  Interior.  And  of  course  under  such  an  administra 
tion  the  cause  of  "Religion"  made  tremendous  strides. 
Catholic  officials  were  appointed  to  public  office,  Cath 
olic  ecclesiastics  were  accorded  public  honors,  and  Cath 
olic  favor  became  a  means  to  political  advancement. 
You  might  see  a  hard-swearing  old  political  pirate  like 
"Uncle  Joe"  Cannon,  taking  his  cigar  out  of  the  corner 
of  his  blasphemous  mouth  and  betaking  himself  to  the 
"Cardinal's  Day  Mass",  to  bend  his  stiff  knees  and  bow 
his  hoary  unrepentant  head  before  a  jeweled  prelate  on 


144  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

a  throne.  You  might  see  an  emissary  of  the  United 
States  government  proceeding  to  Rome,  prostrating 
himself  before  the  Pope,  and  paying  over  seven  million 
dollars  of  our  taxes  for  lands  which  the  filthy  and  sens 
ual  friars  of  the  Philippine  Islands  had  filched  from  the 
wretched  serfs  of  that  country  and  which  the 
wretched  serf  e  had  won  back  by  their  blood  in  a  revolu 
tion. 

Secret  Service 

This  Taft  administration,  urged  on  by  the  Catholic 
intrigue,  made  the  most  determined  efforts  to  prevent 
the  spread  of  radical  thought.  Because  the  popular 
magazines  were  opposing  the  plundering  of  the  country, 
a  bill  was  introduced  into  Congress  to  put  them  out  of 
business  by  a  prohibitive  postal  tax;  the  President 
himself  devoted  all  his  power  to  forcing  the  passage  of 
this  bill.  At  the  same  time  the  Socialist  press  was 
handicapped  by  every  sort  of  persecution.  I  was  at 
that  time  in  intimate  touch  with  the  "Appeal  to  Rea 
son",  and  I  know  that  scarcely  a  month  passed  that  the 
Post  Office  Department  did  not  invent  some  new  "reg 
ulation"  especially  designed  to  limit  its  circulation.  I 
recall  one  occasion  when  I  met  the  editor  on  his  way 
to  Washington  with  a  trunkf ul  of  letters  from  subscrib 
ers  who  complained  that  their  postmasters  refused  to 
deliver  the  paper  to  them ;  and  later  on  this  same  editor 
was  prosecuted  by  a  Catholic  Attorney  General  and 
sentenced  to  prison  for  seeking  to  awaken  the  people 
concerning  the  Moyer-Haywood  case. 

From  my  personal  knowledge  I  can  say  that  under 
the  administration  of  President  Taft  the  Roman  Cath 
olic  Church  and  the  Secret  Service  of  the  Federal  Gov- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  145 

ernment  worked  hand  in  hand  for  the  undermining  of 
the  radical  movement  in  America.  Catholic  lecturers 
toured  the  country,  pouring  into  the  ears  of  the  public 
vile  slanders  about  the  private  morality  of  Socialists; 
while  at  the  same  time  government  detectives,  paid 
out  of  public  funds,  spent  their  time  seeking  evidence 
for  these  Catholic  lecturers  to  use.  I  know  one  man,  a 
radical  labor-leader,  whose  morals  happened  to  ap 
proach  those  of  the  average  capitalist  politician,  and 
who  was  prevented  by  threats  of  exposure  and  scandal 
from  accepting  the  Socialist  nomination  for  President. 
I  know  a  dozen  others  who  were  shadowed  and  spied 
upon ;  I  know  one  case — myself — a  man  who  was  asking 
a  divorce  from  his  wife,  and  whose  mail  was  opened 
for  months. 

This  subject  is  one  on  which  I  naturally  speak  with 
extreme  reluctance.  I  will  only  say  that  my  opponent 
in  the  suit  made  no  charge  of  misconduct  against  me ; 
but  those  in  control  of  our  political  police  evidently 
thought  it  likely  that  a  man  who  was  not  living  with 
his  wife  might  have  something  to  hide ;  so  for  months 
my  every  move  was  watched  and  all  my  mail  inter 
cepted.  In  such  a  case  one  might  at  first  suspect  one's 
private  opponent ;  but  it  soon  became  evident  that  this 
net  was  cast  too  wide  for  any  private  agency.  Not 
merely  was  my  own  mail  opened,  but  the  mail  of  all 
my  relatives  and  friends — people  residing  in  places  as 
far  apart  as  California  and  Florida.  I  recall  the  bland 
smile  of  a  government  official  to  whom  I  complained 
about  this  matter:  "If  you  have  nothing  to  hide  you 
have  nothing  to  fear."  My  answer  was  that  a  study  of 
many  labor  cases  had  taught  me  the  methods  of  the 

10 


146  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

agent  provocateur.  He  is  quite  willing  to  take  real  evi 
dence  if  he  can  find  it ;  but  if  not,  he  has  familiarized 
himself  with  the  affairs  of  his  victim,  and  can  make 
evidence  which  will  be  convincing  when  exploited  by 
the  yellow  press.  In  my  own  case,  the  matter  was  not 
brought  to  a  test,  for  I  went  abroad  to  live;  when  I 
made  my  next  attack  on  Big  Business,  the  Taft  admin 
istration  had  been  repudiated  at  the  polls,  and  the 
Secret  Service  of  the  government  was  no  longer  at  the 
disposal  of  the  Catholic  machine. 

Tax  Exemption 

Today  the  Catholic  Church  is  firmly  established  and 
everywhere  recognized  as  one  of  the  main  pillars  of 
American  capitalism.  It  has  some  fifteen  thousand 
churches,  fourteen  million  communicants,  and  prop 
erty  valued  at  half  a  billion  dollars.  Upon  this  property 
it  pays  no  taxes,  municipal,  state  or  national;  which 
means,  quite  obviously,  that  you  and  I,  who  do  not  go 
to  church,  but  who  do  pay  taxes,  furnish  the  public 
costs  of  Catholicism.  We  pay  to  have  streets  paved 
and  lighted  and  cleaned  in  front  of  Catholic  churches ; 
we  pay  to  have  thieves  kept  away  from  them,  fires  put 
out  in  them,  records  preserved  for  them — all  the  serv 
ices  of  civilization  given  to  them  gratis,  and  this  in  a 
land  whose  constitution  provides  that  Congress  (which 
includes  all  state  and  municipal  legislative  bodies) 
"shall  make  no  law  respecting  an  establishment  of  re 
ligion."  When  war  is  declared,  and  our  sons  are  drafted 
to  defend  the  country,  all  Catholic  monks  and  friars, 
priests  and  dignitaries  are  exempted.  They  are  "min 
isters  of  religion" ;  whereas  we  Socialists  may  not  even 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  147 

have  the  status  of  "conscientious  objectors."  We  do 
not  teach  "religion" ;  we  only  teach  justice  and  human 
ity,  decency  and  truth. 

In  defense  of  this  tax-exemption  graft,  the  stock 
answer  is  that  the  property  is  being  used  for  purposes 
of  "education"  or  "charity".  It  is  a  school,  in  which 
children  are  being  taught  that  "liberty  of  conscience  is 
a  most  pestiferous  error,  from  which  arises  revolution, 
corruption,  contempt  of  sacred  things,  holy  institutions, 
and  laws."  (Pius  IX).  It  is  a  "House  of  Refuge",  to 
which  wayward  girls  are  committed  by  Catholic  magis 
trates,  and  in  which  they  are  worked  twelve  hours  a 
day  in  a  laundry  or  a  clothing  sweat-shop.  Or  it  is  a 
"parish-house",  in  which  a  celibate  priest  lives  under 
the  care  of  an  attractive  young  "house-keeper".  Or  it 
is  a  nunnery,  in  which  young  girls  are  held  against 
their  will  and  fed  upon  the  scraps  from  their  sisters' 
plates  to  teach  them  humility,  and  taught  to  lie  before 
the  altar,  prostrate  in  the  form  of  a  cross,  while  their 
"Superiors"  walk  upon  their  bodies  to  impress  the  re 
ligious  virtues.  "I  was  a  teacher  in  the  Catholic  schools 
up  to  a  very  recent  period,"  writes  the  woman  friend 
who  tells  me  of  these  customs,  "and  I  know  about  the 
whole  awful  system  which  endeavors  to  throttle  every 
genuine  impulse  of  the  human  will." 

Concerning  a  large  part  of  this  church  property, 
the  claim  of  "religious"  use  has  not  even  the  shadow  of 
justification.  In  every  large  city  of  America  you  will 
find  acres  of  land  owned  by  the  Catholic  machine,  and 
supposed  to  be  the  future  site  of  some  institution ;  but 
as  time  goes  on  and  property  values  increase,  the 
church  decides  to  build  on  a  cheaper  site,  and  proceeds 


148  THE  PKOFITS  OF  RELIGION 

to  cash  in  the  profits  of  its  investment,  precisely  as 
does  any  other  real  estate  speculator.  Everywhere  you 
turn  in  the  history  of  Romanism  you  find  it  at  this 
same  game,  doing  business  under  the  cloak  of  philan 
thropy  and  in  the  holy  name  of  Christ.  Read  the  letter 
which  the  Catholic  Bishop  of  Mexico  sent  to  the  Pope 
in  1647,  complaining  of  the  Jesuit  fathers  and  their 
boundless  graft.  In  McCabe's  "Candid  History  of  the 
Jesuits"  appears  a  summary: 

A  remarkable  account  is  given  of  the  worldly  property  of 
the  fathers.  They  hold,  it  seems,  the  greatei  part  of  the  wealth 
of  Mexico.  Two  of  their  colleges  own  300,000  sheep,  besides 
cattle  and  other  property.  They  own  six  large  sugar  refineries, 
worth  from  half  a  million  to  a  million  crowns  each,  and  mak 
ing  an  annual  profit  of  100,000  crowns  each,  while  all  the  other 
monks  and  clergy  of  Mexico  together  own  only  three  small  re 
fineries.  They  have  immense  farms,  rich  silver  mines,  large  shops 
and  butcheries,  and  do  a  vast  trade.  Yet  they  continually  in 
trigue  for  legacies — a  woman  has  recently  left  them  70,000 
crowns — and  they  refuse  to  pay  the  appointed  tithe  on  them. 
It  is  piquant  to  add  to  this  authoritative  description  that  the 
Jesuit  congregation  at  Rome  were  still  periodically  forbidding 
the  fathers  to  engage  in  commerce,  and  Jesuit  writers  still 
gravely  maintain  that  the  society  never  engaged  in  commerce. 
It  should  be  added  that  the  missionaries  were  still  heavily  subsi 
dized  by  the  King  of  Spain,  that  there  were  (the  Bishop  says) 
only  five  or  six  Jesuits  to  each  of  their  establishments,  and  that 
they  conducted  only  ten  colleges. 

"Holy  History" 

And  if  you  think  this  tax-exemption  privilege 
should  be  taken  away  from  the  church  grafters,  let  me 
suggest  a  course  of  procedure.  Write  a  letter  about  it 
to  your  daily  newspaper;  and  if  the  letter  is  not  pub 
lished,  go  and  see  the  editor  and  ask  why ;  so  you  will 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  149 

learn  something  about  the  partnership  between  Super- 
sition  and  Big  Business ! 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  today  no  daily  news 
paper  in  any  large  American  city  dares  to  attack  the 
emoluments  of  the  Catholic  Church,  or  to  advocate  re 
strictions  upon  the  ecclesiastical  machine.  As  I  write, 
they  are  making  a  new  Catholic  bishop  in  Los  Angeles, 
and  all  the  newspapers  of  that  graft-ridden  city  herald 
it  as  an  important  social  event.  Each  paper  has  the 
picture  of  the  new  prelate,  with  his  shepherd's  crook 
upraised,  his  empty  face  crowned  with  a  rhomboidal 
fooPs  cap,  and  enough  upholstery  on  him  to  outfit  a 
grand  opera  company.  The  Los  Angeles  "Examiner", 
the  only  paper  in  the  city  with  a  pretense  to  radicalism, 
turns  loose  its  star- writer — one  of  those  journalist 
virtuosos  who  will  describe  you  a  Wild  West  "rodeo" 
one  day,  and  a  society  elopement  the  next,  and  a  G.  0. 
P.  convention  the  next ;  and  always  with  his  picture,  one 
inch  square,  at  the  head  of  his  effusion.  He  takes  in 
the  Catholic  festivity ;  and  does  it  phaze  him  ?  It  does 
not !  He  is  a  newspaper  man,  and  if  his  city  editor  sent 
him  to  hell,  he  would  take  the  assignment  and  write 
like  the  devil.  To  read  him  now  you  might  think  he 
had  been  reared  in  a  convent ;  his  soul  is  uplifted,  and 
he  bursts  forth  in  pure  spontaneous  ecstacy : 

Solemnly  magnificent,  every  brilliant  detail  symbolically 
picturing  the  holy  history  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  the 
inexorable  progress  of  its  immense  structure,  which  rises  from 
the  rock  of  Peter,  with  its  beacons  of  faith  and  devotion  pierc 
ing  the  fog  of  doubt  and  fear  which  surround  the  world  and  the 
worldly,  was  the  ceremony  yesterday  at  the  Cathedral  of  St. 
Vibiana,  whereby  Bishop  John  J.  Cantwell  was  installed  in  his 
diocese  of  Monterey  and  Los  Angeles. 


150  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

And  then,  a  month  later,  comes  another  occasion  of 
state — the  iwenty-third  Annu:.  banquet  ,  the  Mer 
chants'  and  Manufacturers'  Association  of  Los  Angeles. 
I  should  have  to  write  a  little  essay  to  make  clear  the 
sociological  significance  of  that  function;  explaining 
first,  a  nation-wide  organization  which  has  been  proven 
by  congressional  investigation  and  by  the  publication  of 
its  secret  documents  to  be  a  machine  for  the  corruption 
of  our  political  life;  and  then  exhibiting  our  "City  of 
the  Angels",  from  which  all  Angels  have  long  since  fled ; 
a  city  in  the  first  crude  stage  of  land  speculation,  with 
out  order,  dignity  or  charm ;  a  city  of  real  estate  agents, 
who  exist  by  selling  climate  to  new  arrivals  from  the 
East ;  a  city  whose  intellectual  life  is  "boosting",  whose 
standards  of  truth  are  those  of  the  horse-trade.  Its 
newspapers  publish  a  table  of  temperatures,  showing 
the  daily  contrast  between  Southern  California  and  the 
East.  This  device  is  effective  in  the  winter-time;  but 
last  June,  when  for  five  days  the  temperature  went  to 
over  110,  and  several  times  114 — the  Los  Angeles  space 
was  left  empty! 

In  the  same  way,  there  is  a  rule  that  our  earth 
quake  shocks  are  never  mentioned,  unless  they  destroy 
whole  towns.  On  the  afternoon  of  Jan.  26th,  1918,  a 
cyclone  hit  Pasadena,  of  violence  sufficient  to  lift  a  barn 
over  a  church-steeple  and  deposit  it  in  the  pastor's 
front  yard.  That  evening  a  friend  of  mine  in  Los  An 
geles  called  up  the  office  of  the  "Times"  to  make  in 
quiry  ;  and  although  they  are  only  thirteen  miles  away, 
and  have  a  branch  office  and  a  special  correspondent  in 
Pasadena,  the  answer  was  that  they  had  heard  nothing 
about  the  cyclone !  And  next  morning  I  made  a  caref  uJ 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  151 

search  of  their  columns.  On  the  front  page  I  read: 
"Fourth  Blizzard  of  Season  Raging  in  East";  also: 
"Another  Earthquake  in  Guatemala".  But  not  a  line 
about  the  Pasadena  cyclone ,  That  there  was  plenty  of 
space  in  that  issue,  you  may  judge  from  the  fact  that 
there  were  twenty  headlines  like  the  following — many 
of  them  representing  full  page  and  half  page  illustrated 
"write-ups" : 

Where  Spring  is  January;  Wealth  Waits  in  California;  The 
Bright  Side  of  Sunshine  Land;  Come  to  California:  Southland's 
Arms  Outstretched  in  Cordial  Invitation  to  the  East;  Flower 
Stands  Make  Gay  City  Streets;  Southland  Climate  Big  Manu 
facturing  Factor;  Joy  of  Life  Demonstrated  in  Los  Angeles* 
Beautiful  Homes;  Nymphs  Knit  and  Bathe  at  Ocean's  Sunny 
Beach;  etc. 

Now  we  are  in  the  War  and  our  business  is  booming, 
we  are  making  money  hand  over  fist.  It  is  all  the  more 
delightful,  because  we  are  putting  our  souls  into  it,  we 
are  lending  our  money  to  the  government  and  saving 
the  world  for  Democracy!  Our  labor  unionists  have 
been  driven  to  other  cities,  and  our  Mexican  agitators 
and  I.  W.  W.'s  are  in  jail;  so,  in  the  gilt  ball-room  of 
our  palatial  six-dollar-a-day  hotel  the  four  hundred 
masters  of  our  prosperity  meet  to  pat  themselves  on  the 
back,  and  they  invite  the  new  Catholic  bishop  to  come 
and  confer  the  grace  of  God  upon  their  eating. 

The  Bishop  comes ;  and  I  take  up  the  "Times" — the 
labor-hating,  labor-baiting,  fire-and -slaughter-breath 
ing  "Times" — and  here  is  the  episcopal  picture  on  the 
front  page,  the  arms  stretched  four  columns  wide  in 
oratorical  beneficence.  How  the  shepherd  of  Jesus  does 
love  the  Mercnants  and  Manufacturers!  How  his  elo 
quence  is  poured  out  upon  them !  "You  represent,  gent- 


152  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

lemen,  the  largest  and  the  most  civilizing  secular  body 
In  the  country.  You  are  the  pioneers  of  American  civ 
ilization I  am  glad  to  be  among  you;  glad  that  my 

lines  have  fallen  in  this  glorious  land  by  the  sunset  sea, 
and  honored  to  meet  in  intimate  acquaintance  the  big 
men  who  have  raised  here  in  a  few  years  a  city  of  met 
ropolitan  proportions." 

And  then,  bearing  in  mind  his  responsibilities  as 
guardian  of  Exploitation,  the  Bishop  goes  on  to  tell 
them  about  the  coming  class-war.  "On  the  one  side  a 
statesman  preaching  patience  and  respect  for  vested 
rights,  strict  observance  of  public  faith;  on  the  other 
a  demagog  speaking  about  the  tyranny  of  capitalists 
and  usurers."  And  then,  of  course,  the  inevitable  re 
ligious  tag:  "How  will  men  obey  you,  if  they  believe 
not  in  God,  who  is  the  author  of  all  authority?"  At 
which,  according  to  the  "Times",  "prolonged  applause 
and  cheers"  from  the  Merchants  and  Manufacturers! 
The  editor  of  the  "Times"  goes  back  to  his  office,  and 
inspired  by  this  episcopal  eloquence  writes  a  "leader" 
with  the  statement  that:  <rWe  have  no  proletariat  in 
America!" 

Das  Centrum 

In  order  to  see  clearly  the  ultimate  purpose  of  this 
Unholy  Alliance,  this  union  of  Superstitition  and  the 
Merchants'  and  Manufacturers'  Association,  we  have  to 
go  to  Europe,  where  the  arrangement  has  been  working 
for  a  thousand  years.  In  Europe  to-day  we  see  the  whole 
world  in  conflict  with  a  band  of  criminals  who  have  been 
able  to  master  the  minds  and  lives  of  a  hundred  million 
highly  civilized  people.  As  I  write,  the  Junker  aristocracy 
is  at  bay,  and  soon  to  have  its  throat  cut ;  but  there  comes 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  153 

a  Holy  Father  to  its  rescue,  with  the  cross  of  Jesus  up 
lifted,  and  a  series  of  pleas  for  mercy,  written  in  Vienna, 
edited  in  Berlin,  and  sent  out  from  Rome.  The  Holy 
Father  loves  all  mankind  with  a  tender  and  touching 
love;  his  heart  bleeds  at  the  sight  of  bloodshed  and  suf 
fering,  and  he  pleads  the  sacred  cause  of  peace  on  earth 
and  good-will  toward  men. 

But  what  was  the  Holy  Father  doing  through  the 
forty-three  years  that  the  Potsdam  gang  were  preparing 
for  thei'r  assault  on  the  world?  How  was  the  Holy 
Father  manifesting  his  love  of  peace  and  good  will?  He 
is,  you  understand,  the  "sole,  last,  supreme  judge  of  what 
is  right  and  wrong,"  and  his  followers  obey  him  with  the 
utmost  promptness  and  devotion — they  express  them 
selves  as  "prostrate  at  his  feet."  And  when  the  masters 
of  Prussia  came  to  him  and  said :  "Give  us  the  power  to 
turn  this  nation  into  the  world's  greatest  military  em 
pire" — what  did  the  Roman  Church  answer?  Did  it  speak 
boldly  for  the  gentle  Jesus,  and  the  cause  of  peace  on 
earth  arfld  good- will  towards  men?  No,  it  did  not.  To 
Bismarck  in  Germany  it  said,  precisely  as  it  said  to  Mark 
Hanna  in  America:  "Give  us  honors  and  prestige;  give 
us  power  over  the  minds  of  the  young,  so  that  we  may 
plunder  the  poor  and  build  our  cathedrals  and  feed  fat 
our  greed ;  and  in  return  we  will  furnish  you  with  votes, 
so  that  you  may  rule  the  state  and  do  what  you  w&l." 

You  think  there  is  exaggeration  in  that  statement? 
Why,  we  know  the  very  names  of  the  prelates  with  whom 
the  master-cynic  of  the  Junkerthum  made  his  "deal."  He 
had  tried  the  method  of  the  Kultur-kampf,  and  had  failed ; 
but  before  he  repealed  the  anti-Catholic  laws,  he  made 
sure  that  the  Church  had  learned  its  lesson,  and  would 


154  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

nevermore  oppose  the  Prussian  ruling  caste.  We  know 
how  this  bargain  was  carried  out ;  we  have  the  record  of 
the  Centrum,  the  Catholic  party  of  Germany,  whose  hun 
dred  deputies  were  the  solid  rock  upon  which  the  mili 
tary  regime  of  Prussia  was  erected.  Not  a  battle-ship 
nor  a  Zeppelin  was  built  for  which  the  Black  Terror  did 
not  vote  the  funds;  not  a  school-child  was  beaten  in 
Posen  or  Alsace  that  the  New  Inquisition  did  not  shout 
its  "Hoch !"  The  writer  sat  in  the  visitors'  gallery  of  the 
Reichstag  when  the  Socialists  were  protesting  against 
the  torturing  of  miserable  Herreros  in  Africa,  and  he 
heard  the  deputies  of  the  Holy  Father's  political  party 
screaming  their  rage  like  jaguars  in  a  jungle  night.  All 
over  Europe  the  Catholic  Church  organized  fake  labor 
unions,  the  "yellows,"  as  they  were  called,  to  scab  upon 
the  workers  and  undermine  the  revolutionary  movement. 
The  Holy  Father  himself  issued  precise  instructions  for 
the  management  of  these  agencies  of  betrayal.  Hear  the 
most  pious  and  benevolent  Leo  XIII: 

"They  must  pay  special  and  principal  attention  to 
piety  and  morality,  and  their  internal  discipline  must  be 
directed  precisely  by  these  considerations;  otherwise 
they  entirely  lose  their  special  character,  and  come  to  be 
very  little  better  than  those  societies  which  take  no 
account  of  Religion  at  all." 

It  is  so  hard,  you  see,  to  keep  a  man  thinking  about 
piety  andl  morality  while  he  is  starving!  I  am  quoting 
from  the  Encyclical  Letter  on  "The  Condition  of  Labor," 
issued  in  1891,  and  addressed  "to  our  Venerable  Brethren, 
all  Patriarchs,  Primates,  Archbishops  and  Bishops  of  the 
Catholic  World  in  Grace  and  Communion  with  the  Apos- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

tolic  See."   The  purpose  of  the  letter  is  "to  refute  false 
teaching,"  and  the  substance  of  its  message  is: 

This  great  labor  question  cannot  be  solved  except  by  assum 
ing  as  a  principle  that  private  property  must  be  held  sacred  and 
inviolable. 

And  again,  the  purpose  of  churches  proclaimed  in 
language  as  frank  as  any  used  in  the  present  book : 

The  chief  thing  to  be  secured  is  the  safe-guarding,  by  legal 
enactment  and  policy,  of  private  property.  Most  of  all  it  is 
essential  in  these  times  of  covetous  greed,  to  keep  the  multitude 
within  the  line  of  duty;  for  if  all  may  justly  strive  to  benefit 
their  condition,  yet  neither  justice  nor  the  common  good  al 
lows  any  one  to  seize  that  which  belongs  to  another,  or,  under 
the  pretext  of  futile  and  ridiculous  equality,  to  lay  hands  on 
other  peoples'  fortunes. 

And  this,  you  understand,  in  lands  where  rapine  and 
conquest,  class-tyranny  and  priestly  domination  have 
been  the  custom  since  the  dawn  of  history;  in  which  no 
property-right  can  possibly  trace  back  to  any  other  basis 
than  force.  In  Austria,  for  example — Austria,  the  leader 
and  guardian  of  the  Holy  Alliance — Austria,  which  had 
no  Reformation,  no  Revolution,  no  Kultur-kampf — Aus 
tria,  in  which  the  income  of  the  Catholic  Primate  is 
$625,000  a  year !  In  other  words,  Austria  is  still  to  a  large 
extent  a  "Priestly  Empire;"  and  it  was  Austria  which 
began  the  war — began  it  in  a  religious  quarrel,  with  a 
Slav  people  which  does  not  acknowledge  the  Holy 
Father  as  the  ruler  of  the  world,  but  persists  in  adhering 
to  the  Eastern  Church.  So  of  course  to-day,  when  Aus 
tria  is  learning  the  bitter  lesson  that  they  who  draw  the 
sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword,  the  heart  of  the  Holy 
Father  is  wrung  with  grief,  and  he  sends  out  these  elo 
quent  peace-notes,  written  in  Vienna  and  edited  in  Ber- 


156  THE  PROFITS  OF  RETJGION 

lin.  And  at  the  same  time  his  private  chaplain  is  con 
victed  and  sentenced  to  prison  for  life  as  Austria's  Mas 
ter-Spy  in  Rome ! 

It  is  a  curious  thing  to  observe — the  natural  instinct 
which,  all  over  the  world,  draws  Superstition  and  Exploi 
tation  together.  This  war,  which  is  hailed  as  a  war 
against  autocracy,  might  almost  as  accurately  be  de 
scribed  as  a  war  against  the  clerical  system.  Wherever 
in  the  world  you  find  the  Papal  power  strong,  there  you 
find  sympathy  with  the  Prussian  infamy  and  there  you 
find  German  intrigue.  In  Spain,  for  example ;  in  Ireland 
and  Quebec,  and  in  the  Argentine.  The  treatment  of 
Belgium  was  a  little  too  raw — too  many  priests  were 
shot  at  the  outset,  and  so  Cardinal  Mercier  denounces  the 
Germans ;  but  you  notice  that  he  pleads  in  vain  with  the 
Vatican,  which  stands  firm  by  its  beloved  Austria,  and 
against  the  godless  kingdom  of  Italy.  The  Kaiser  al 
lows  the  hope  of  restoration  of  the  temporal  power  at 
the  peace  settlement ;  and  meantime  the  law  forbidding 
the  presence  of  the  Jesuits  in  Germany  has  been  repealed, 
and  all  over  the  world  the  propagandists  of  this  order  are 
working  for  the  Kaiser.  Sir  Roger  Casement  was  raised 
a  Catholic,  and  so  also  "Jim"  Larkin,  the  Irish  labor- 
leader  who  is  touring  America  denouncing  the  Allies. 
The  Catholic  Bishop  of  Melbourne  opposed  and  beat  con 
scription  in  Australia ,  and  it  was  Catholic  propaganda  of 
treachery  among  the  ignorant  peasant-soldiers  from 
Sicily  which  caused  the  breaking  of  the  Italian  line  at 
Tolmino.  So  deeply  has  this  instinct  worked  that,  in  the 
fall  of  1917  while  the  Socialist  party  in  New  York  was 
campaigning  for  immediate  peace,  the  Catholic  Irish  sud 
denly  forgot  their  ancient  horrors.  The  Catholic  "Free- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  157 

man's  Journal"  published  nine  articles  favoring  Socialism 
in  a  single  issue;  while  even  "The  Tablet,"  the  diocesan 
paper,  began  to  discover  that  the  Socialists  were  not  such 
bad  fellows  after  all.  The  same  "Tablet"  which  a  few 
years  ago  allowed  Father  Belford  to  declare  that  Social 
ists  were  mad  dogs  who  should  be  "stopped  with  a 
bullet"! 

P.  S.  The  reader  will  be  interested  to  know  that  for  the  state 
ments  on  page  155,  Upton  Sinclair  was  described  as  a  "scoundrel" 
by  a  former  prime  minister  of  the  Austrian  Empire,  and  brought 
suit  against  the  gentleman,  and  after  a  court  trial  was  awarded 
damages  of  500,000  crowns — about  $7  in  American  money. 


BOOK  FOUR 

The  Church  of  the  Slavers 


,  underneath  the  Crown  of  Thorn, 
The  eye-balls  fierce,  the  features  grim! 
And  merrily  from  night  to  morn 

We  chaunt  his  praise  and  worship  him — 
Great  Christus-Jingo,  at  whose  feet 
Christian  and  Jew  and  Atheist  meet ! 

A  wondrous  god !  most  fit  for  those 
Who  cheat  on  'Change,  then  creep  to  prayer; 

Blood  on  his  heavenly  altar  flows, 
Hell's  burning  incense  fills  the  air, 

And  Death  attests  in  street  and  lane 

The  hideous  glory  of  his  reign. 

— Buchanan 


159 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  16i 

Face  of  Caesar 

The  thesis  of  this  book  is  the  effect  of  fixed  dogma  in 
producing  mental  paralysis,  and  the  use  of  this  mental 
paralysis  by  Economic  Exploitation.  From  that  stand 
point  the  various  Protestant  sects  are  better  than  the 
Catholic,  but  not  much  better.  The  Catholics  stand  upon 
Tradition,  the  Protestants  upon  an  Inspired  Word;  but 
since  this  Word  is  the  entire  literary  product,  history 
and  biography,  science  and  legislation,  poetry,  drama  and 
fiction  of  a  whole  people  for  something  like  a  thousand 
years,  it  is  possible  by  judicious  selection  of  texts  to 
prove  anything  you  wish  to  prove  and  to  justify  anything 
you  wish  to  do.  The  "Holy  Book"  being  full  of  poly 
gamy,  slavery,  rape  and  wholesale  murder,  committed  by 
priests  and  rulers  under  the  direct  orders  of  God,  it  was 
a  very  simple  matter  for  the  Protestant  Slavers  to  con 
struct  a  Bible  defense  of  their  system. 

They  get  poor  Jesus  because  he  was  given  to  irony, 
that  most  dangerous  form  of  utterance.  If  he  could  come 
back  to  life,  and  see  what  men  have  done  with  his  little 
joke  about  the  face  of  Caesar  on  the  Roman  coin,  I  think 
he  would  drop  dead.  As  for  Paul,  he  was  a  Roman  bure 
aucrat,  with  no  nonsense  in  his  make-up;  when  he  or 
dered,  "Servants  obey  your  masters,"  he  meant  exactly 
what  he  said.  The  Roman  official  stamp  which  he  put 
upon  the  gospel  of  Jesus  has  been  the  salvation  of  the 
Slavers  from  the  Reformation  on. 

In  the  time  of  Martin  Luther,  the  peasants  of  Ger 
many  were  suffering  the  most  atrocious  and  awful  mis 
ery  ;  Luther  himself  knew  about  it,  he  had  denounced  the 
princely  robbers  and  the  priestly  land-exploiters  with 
that  picturesque  violence  of  which  he  was  a  master.  But 


162  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

nothing  had  been  done  about  it,  nothing  ever  is  done 
about  it — until  at  last  the  miserable  peasants  attempted 
to  organize  and  win  their  own  rights.  Their  demands  do 
not  seem  to  us  so  very  criminal  as  we  read  them  today; 
the  privilege  of  electing  their  own  pastors,  the  abolition 
of  villeinage,  the  right  to  hunt  and  fish  and  cut  wood  in 
the  forest,  the  reduction  of  exorbitant  rents,  extra  pay 
ment  for  extra  labor,  and — that  universal  cry  of  peasant 
communes  whether  in  Russia,  England,  Mexico  or  six 
teenth  century  Germany — the  restoration  to  the  village 
of  lands  taken  by  fraud.  But  Luther  would  hear  nothing 
of  slaves  asserting  their  own  rights,  and  took  refuge  in 
the  Pauline  sociology:  If  they  really  wished  to  follow 
Christ,  they  would  drop  the  sword  and  resort  to  prayer; 
the  gospel  has  to  do  with  spiritual,  not  temporal,  affairs ; 
earthly  society  cannot  exist  without  inequalities,  etc. 

And  when  the  peasants  went  on  in  spite  of  this,  he 
turned  upon  them  and  denounced  them  to  the  princes; 
he  issued  proclamations  which  might  have  been  the  in 
structions  of  Mr.  John  Wanamaker  to  the  police-force  of 
his  "City  of  Brotherly  Love":  "One  cannot  answer  a 
rebel  with  reason,  but  the  best  answer  is  to  hit  him  with 
the  fist  until  blood  flows  from  the  nose."  He  issued  a 
letter:  "Against  the  Murderous  and  Thieving  Mob  of 
Peasants,"  which  might  have  come  from  the  Reverend 
Woelfkin,  Fifth  Avenue  Pastor  of  Standard  Oil:  "The 
ass  needs  to  be  beaten,  and  the  populace  needs  to  be  con 
trolled  with  a  strong  hand.  God  knew  this  well,  and 
therefore  he  gave  the  rulers,  not  a  fox's  tail,  but  a  sword." 
He  implored  these  rulers,  after  the  fashion  of  Methodist 
Chancellor  Day  of  the  University  of  Syracuse :  "Do  not 
be  troubled  about  the  severity  of  their  repression,  for  it 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  163 

will  save  many  souls."  With  such  pious  exhortations  in 
their  ears  the  princes  set  to  work,  and  slaughtered  a  hun 
dred  thousand  of  the  miserable  wretches ;  they  completely 
aborted  the  social  hopes  of  the  Reformation,  and  cast 
humanity  into  the  pit  of  wage-slavery  and  militarism  for 
four  centuries.  As  a  church  scholar,  Prof.  Rauschen- 
busch,  puts  it: 

The  glorious  years  of  the  Lutheran  Reformation  were  from 
1517  to  1525,  when  the  whole  nation  was  in  commotion,  and  a 
great  revolutionary  tidal  wave  seemed  to  be  sweeping  every 
class  and  every  higher  interest  one  step  nearer  to  its  ideal  of 
life The  Lutheran  Reformation  had  been  most  truly  re 
ligious  and  creative  when  it  embraced  the  whole  of  human  life 
and  enlisted  the  enthusiasm  of  all  ideal  men  and  movements. 
When  it  became  "religious"  in  the  narrow  sense,  it  grew  schol 
astic  and  spiny,  quarrelsome,  and  impotent  to  awaken  high  en 
thusiasm  and  noble  life. 

Deutschland  ueber  Alles 

As  a  result  of  Luther's  treason  to  humanity,  his 
church  became  the  state  church  of  Prussia,  and  Bible- 
worship  and  Devil-terror  played  their  part,  along  with 
the  Mass  and  the  Confessional,  in  building  up  the  Junker 
dream.  A  court  official — the  Oberhofprediger — was  set 
up,  and  from  that  time  on  the  Hohenzollerns  were  the 
most  pious  criminals  in  Europe.  Frederick  the  Great,  the 
ancestral  genius,  was  an  atheist  and  a  scoffer,  but  he  be 
lieved  devoutly  in  religion  for  his  subjects.  He  said :  "If 
my  soldiers  were  to  begin  to  think,  not  one  would  remain 
in  the  ranks."  And  Carlyle,  instinctive  friend  of  auto 
crats,  tells  with  jocular  approval  how  he  kept  them  from 
thinking : 

He  recognizes  the  uses  of  Religion;  takes  a  good  deal  oi 
pains  with  his  Preaching  Clergy;  will  suggest  texts  to  them;  and 


164  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

for  the  rest  expects  to  be  obeyed  by  them,  as  by  his  Sergeants 
and  Corporals.  Indeed,  the  reverend  men  feel  themselves  to  be 
_  body  of  Spiritual  Sergeants,  Corporals,  and  Captains,  to  whom 
obedience  is  the  rule,  and  discontent  a  thing  not  to  be  indulged 
in  by  any  means. 

So  the  soldiers  stayed  in  the  ranks,  and  Frederick 
raided  Silesia  and  Poland.  His  successors  ordered  all 
the  Protestant  sects  into  one,  so  that  they  might  be 
more  easily  controlled;  from  which  time  the  Lutheran 
Church  has  been  a  department  of  the  Prussian  state,  in 
some  cases  a  branch  of  the  municipal  authority. 

In  1848,  when  the  people  of  various  German  states 
demanded  their  liberty,  it  was  an  ultra-pious  king  of 
Prussia  who  sent  his  troops  and  shot  them  down — pre 
cisely  as  Luther  had  advised  to  shoot  down  the  pea 
ants.  At  this  time  the  future  maker  of  the  German  E 
i:ire  rose  in  the  Landtag  and  made  his  bow  before  the 
world ;  a  young  Prussian  land-magnate,  Otto  von  Bis 
marck  by  name,  he  shook  his  fist  in  the  face  of  the  new 
German  liberalism,  and  incidentally  of  the  new  German 
infidelity : 

Christianity  is  the  solid  basis  of  Prussia;  and  no  state 
erected  upon  any  other  foundation  can  permanently  exist. 

The  present  Hohenzollern  has  diligently  maintained 
this  tradition  of  his  line.  It  was  his  custom  to  tour  the 
Empire  in  a  train  of  blue  and  white  cars,  carrying  as 
many  costumes  as  any  stage  favorite,  most  of  them  mil 
itary  ;  with  him  on  the  train  went  the  Prussian  god,  and 
there  was  scarcely  a  performance  at  which  this  god  did 
not  appear,  also  in  military  costume.  After  the  failure 
of  the  "Kultur-kampf,"  the  official  Lutheran  religion 
was  ordered  to  make  friends  with  its  ancient  enemy, 
the  Catholic  Church.  Said  the  Kaiser : 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  165 

I  make  no  difference  between  the  adherents  of  the  Catholic 
and  Protestant  creeds.  Let  them  both  stand  upon  the  founda 
tion  of  Christianity,  and  they  are  both  bound  to  be  true  citizens 
and  obedient  subjects.  Then  the  German  people  will  be  the 
rock  of  granite  upon  which  our  Lord  God  can  build  and  com 
plete  his  work  of  Kultur  in  the  world. 

And  here  is  the  oath  required  of  the  Catholic  clergy, 
upon  their  admission  to  equality  of  trustworthiness 
with  their  Protestant  confreres : 

I  will  be  submissive,  faithful  and  obedient  to  his  Royal 
Majesty, — and  his  lawful  successors  in  the  government, — as  my 
most  gracious  King  and  Sovereign;  promote  his  welfare  accord 
ing  to  my  ability;  prevent  injury  and  detriment  to  him;  and 
particularly  endeavor  carefully  to  cultivate  in  the  minds  of  the 
people  under  my  care  a  sense  of  reverence  and  fidelity  towards 
the  King,  love  for  the  Fatherland,  obedience  to  the  laws,  and  all 
those  virtues  which  in  a  Christian  denote  a  good  citizen;  and  I 
will  not  suffer  any  man  to  teach  or  act  in  a  contrary  spirit.  In 
particular  I  vow  that  I  will  not  support  any  society  or  associa 
tion,  either  at  home  or  abroad,  which  might  endanger  the  public 
security,  and  will  inform  His  Majesty  of  any  proposal  made, 
either  in  my  diocese  or  elsewhere,  which  might  prove  injurious 
to  the  State. 

And  later  on  this  heaven-guided  ruler  conceived  the 
scheme  of  a  Berlin-Bagdad  railway,  for  which  he  needed 
one  religion  more ;  he  paid  a  visit  to  Constantinople,  and 
made  another  debut  and  produced  another  god — with 
the  result  that  millions  of  Turks  are  fighting  under  the 
belief  that  the  Kaiser  is  a  convert  to  the  faith  of  Mo 
hammed  ! 

Der  Tag. 

All  this  was,  of  course,  in  preparation  for  the  great 
event  to  which  all  good  Germans  looked  forward — to 
which  all  German  officers  drank  their  toasts  at  ban 
quets — the  Day. 


166  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

This  glorious  day  came,  and  the  field-gray  armies 
marched  forth,  and  the  Pauline-Lutheran  God  marched 
with  them.  The  Kaiser,  as  usual,  acted  as  spokesman: 

Remember  that  the  German  people  are  the  chosen  of  God. 
On  me,  the  German  emperor,  the  spirit  of  God  has  descended. 
I  am  His  sword,  His  weapon  and  His  viceregent.  Woe  to  the 
disobedient  and  death  to  cowards  and  unbelievers. 

As  to  the  Prussian  state  religion,  its  attitude  to 
the  war  is  set  forth  in  a  little  book  written  by  a  high 
clerical  personage,  the  Herr  Consistorialrat  Dietrich 
Vorwerk,  containing  prayers  and  hymns  for  the  soldiers, 
and  for  the  congregations  at  home.  Here  is  an  appeal 
to  the  Lord  God  of  Battles: 

Though  the  warrior's  bread  be  scanty,  do  Thou  work  daily 
death  and  tenfold  woe  unto  the  enemy.  Forgive  in  merciful 
long-suffering  each  bullet  and  each  blow  which  misses  its  mark. 
Lead  us  not  into  the  temptation  of  letting  our  wrath  be  too 
tame  in  carrying  out  Thy  divine  judgment.  Deliver  us  and  our 
ally  from  the  Infernal  Enemy  and  his  servants  on  earth.  Thine 
is  the  kingdom,  the  German  land;  may  we,  by  the  aid  of  Thy 
steel-clad  hand,  achieve  the  fame  and  the  glory. 

It  is  this  Herr  Consistorialrat  who  has  perpetrated  the 
great  masterpiece  of  humor  of  the  war — the  hymn  in 
which  he  appeals  to  that  God  who  keeps  guard  over 
Cherubim,  Seraphim,  and  Zeppelins.  You  have  to  say 
over  the  German  form  of  these  words  in  order  to  get  the 
effect  of  their  delicious  melody — "Cherubinen,  Seraphi- 
nen,  Zeppelinen!"  And  lest  you  think  that  this  too- 
musical  clergyman  is  a  rara  avis,  turn  to  the  little  book 
which  has  been  published  in  English  under  the  same  title 
as  Herr  Vorwerk's  "Hurrah  and  Hallelujah."  Here  is 
the  Reverend  S.  Lehmann: 

Germany  is  the  center  of  God's  plans  for  the  world.    Ger- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  167 

many's  fight  against  the  whole  world  is  in  reality  the  battle  of 
the  spirit  against  the  whole  world's  infamy,  falsehood  and 
devilish  cunning. 

And  here  is  Pastor  K.  Koenig: 

It  was  God's  will  that  we  should  will  the  war. 

And  Pastor  J.  Rump : 

Our  defeat  would  mean  the  defeat  of  His  Son  in  humanity. 
We  fight  for  the  cause  of  Jesus  within  mankind. 

And  here  is  an  eminent  theological  professor : 

The  deepest  and  most  thought-inspiring  result  of  the  war  is 
the  German  God.  Not  the  national  God  such  as  the  lower  na 
tions  worship,  but  "our  God,"  who  is  not  ashamed  of  belonging 
to  us,  the  peculiar  acquirement  of  our  heart. 

King  Cotton 

It  is  a  cheap  way  to  gain  applause  in  these  days,  to 
denounce  the  Prussian  system;  my  only  purpose  is  to 
show  that  Bible-worship,  precisely  as  saint-worship  or 
totem-worship,  delivers  the  worshipper  up  to  the  Slav 
ers.  This  truth  has  held  in  America,  precisely  as  in 
Prussia.  .During  the  middle  of  the  last  century  there 
was  fought  out  a  mighty  issue  in  our  free  republic; 
and  what  was  the  part  played  in  this  struggle  by  the 
Bible-cults  ?  Hear  the  testimony  of  William  Lloyd  Gar 
rison:  "American  Christianity  is  the  main  pillar  of 
American  slavery."  Hear  Parker  Pillsbury:  "We  had 
almost  to  abolish  the  Church  before  we  could  reach  the 
dreadful  institution  at  all." 

In  the  year  1818  the  Presbyterian  General  As 
sembly,  which  represented  the  churches  of  the  South 
as  well  as  of  the  North,  passed  by  a  unanimous  vote  a 
resolution  to  the  effect  that  "Slavery  is  utterly  incon 
sistent  with  the  law  of  God,  which  requires  us  to  love 


168  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

our  neighbor  as  ourselves."  But  in  a  generation  the 
views  of  the  entire  South,  including  the  Presbyterian 
Church,  had  changed  entirely.  What  was  the  reason? 
Had  the  "law  of  God"  been  altered?  Had  some  new 
"revelation"  been  handed  down  ?  Nothing  of  the  kind ; 
it  was  merely  that  a  Yankee  by  the  name  of  Eli  Whit 
ney  had  perfected  a  machine  to  take  the  seeds  out  of 
short  staple  cotton.  The  cotton  crop  of  the  South  in 
creased  from  four  thousand  bales  in  1791  to  four  hun 
dred  and  fifty  thousand  in  1820  and  five  million,  four 
hundred  thousand  in  1860. 

There  was  a  new  monarch,  King  Cotton,  and  his 
empire  depended  upon  slaves.  According  to  the  custom 
of  monarchs  since  the  dawn  of  history,  he  hired  the 
ministers  of  God  to  teach  that  what  he  wanted  was 
right  and  holy.  From  one  end  of  the  South  to  the  other 
the  pulpits  rang  with  the  text :  "Cursed  be  Canaan ;  a 
servant  to  servants  shall  he  be  to  his  brethren."  The 
learned  Bishop  Hopkins,  in  his  "Bible  View  of  Slavery", 
gave  the  standard  interpretation  of  this  text : 

The  Almighty,  forseeing  the  total  degredation  of  the  Negro 
race,  ordained  them  to  servitude  or  slavery  under  the  descendants 
of  Shem  and  Japheth,  doubtless  because  he  judged  it  to  be  their 
fittest  condition. 

I  might  fill  the  balance  of  this  volume  with  cita 
tions  from  defenses  of  the  "peculiar  institution"  in  the 
name  of  Jesus  Christ — and  not  only  from  the  South, 
but  from  the  North.  For  it  must  be  understood  that 
leading  families  of  Massachusetts  and  New  York  owed 
their  power  to  Slavery ;  their  fathers  had  brought  mo 
lasses  from  New  Orleans  and  made  it  into  rum,  and 
taken  it  to  the  coast  of  Africa  to  be  exchanged  for 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  169 

slaves  for  the  Southern  planters.  And  after  this  trade 
was  outlawed,  the  slave-grown  cotton  had  still  to  be 
shipped  to  the  North  and  spun;  so  the  traders  of  the 
.North  must  have  divine  sanction  for  the  Fugitive  Slave 
law.  Here  is  the  Bishop  of  Vermont  declaring:  "The 
slavery  of  the  negro  race  appears  to  me  to  be  fully 
authorized  both  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments." 
Here  in  the  "True  Presbyterian",  of  New  York,  giving 
the  decision  of  a  clerical  man  of  the  world :  "There  is 
no  debasement  in  it.  It  might  have  existed  in  Paradise, 
and  it  may  continue  through  the  Millenium." 

And  when  the  slave-holding  oligarchy  of  the  South 
rose  in  arms  against  those  who  presumed  to  interfere 
with  this  divine  institution,  the  men  of  God  of  the 
South  called  down  blessings  upon  their  armies  in  words 
which,  with  the  proper  change  of  names,  might  have 
been  spoken  in  Berlin  in  August,  1914.  Thus  Dr.  Thorn- 
well,  one  of  the  leading  Presbyterian  divines  of  the 
South:  "The  triumph  of  Lincoln's  principles  is  the 

death-knell  of  slavery Let  us  crush  the  serpent  in 

the  egg."  And  the  Reverend  Dr.  Smythe  of  Charleston  : 
"The  war  is  a  war  against  slavery,  and  is  therefore 
treasonable  rebellion  against  the  Word,  Providence  and 
Government  of  God."  I  read  in  the  papers,  as  I  am 
writing,  how  the  clergy  of  Germany  are  thundering 
against  President  Wilson's  declaration  that  that  coun 
try  must  become  democratic.  Here  is  a  manifesto  of 
the  German  Evangelical  League,  made  public  on  the 
four  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  Reformation : 

We  especially  warn  against  the  heresy,  promulgated  from 
America,  that  Christianity  enjoins  democratic  institutions,  and 
that  they  are  an  essential  condition  of  the  kingdom  of  God  on 
earth. 


170  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

In  exactly  the  same  way  the  religious  bodies  of  the 
entire  South  united  in  an  address  to  Christians  through 
out  the  world,  early  in  the  year  1863 : 

The  recent  proclamation  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  seeking  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves  of  the  South,  is 
in  our  judgment  occasion  of  solemn  protest  on  the  part  of  the 
people  of  God. 

Witches  and  Women 

To  whatever  part  of  the  world  you  travel,  to  what 
ever  page  of  history  you  turn,  you  find  the  endowed  and 
established  clergy  using  the  word  of  God  in  defense  of 
whatever  form  of  slave-driving  may  then  be  popular 
and  profitable.  Two  or  three  hundred  years  ago  it  was 
the  custom  of  Protestant  divines  in  England  and  Amer 
ica  to  hang  poor  old  women  as  witches ;  only  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago  we  find  John  Wesley,  founder  of 
Methodism,  declaring  that  "the  giving  up  of  witch 
craft  is  in  effect  the  giving  up  of  the  Bible."  And  if 
you  investigate  this  witch-burning,  you  will  find  that  it 
is  only  one  aspect  of  a  blot  upon  civilization,  the  Chris 
tian  Mysogyny.  You  see,  there  were  two  Hebrew 
legends — one  that  woman  was  made  out  of  a  man's 
rib,  and  the  other  that  she  ate  an  apple ;  therefore  in 
modern  England  a  wife  must  be  content  with  a  legal 
status  lower  than  a  domestic  servant. 

Perhaps  the  most  comical  of  the  clerical  claims  is 
this — that  Christianity  has  promoted  chivalry  and  re 
spect  for  womanhood.  In  ancient  Greece  and  Rome  the 
woman  was  the  equal  and  helpmate  of  man;  we  read 
in  Tacitus  about  the  splendid  women  of  the  Germans, 
who  took  part  in  public  councils,  and  even  fought  in 
battles.  Two  thousand  years  before  the  Christian  era 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  171 

we  are  told  by  Maspero  that  the  Egyptian  woman  was 
the  mistress  of  her  house;  she  could  inherit  equally 
with  her  brothers,  and  had  full  control  of  her  property. 
We  are  told  by  Paturet  that  she  was  "juridically  the 
equal  of  man,  having  the  same  rights  and  being  treated 
in  the  same  fashion."  But  in  present-day  England,  un 
der  the  common  law,  woman  can  hold  no  office  of  trust 
or  power,  and  her  husband  has  the  sole  custody  of  her 
person,  and  of  her  children  while  minors.  He  can  steal 
her  children,  rob  her  of  her  clothing,  and  beat  her  with 
a  stick  provided  it  is  no  thicker  than  his  thumb.  While 
I  was  in  London  the  highest  court  handed  down  a  de 
cision  on  the  law  which  does  not  permit  a  woman  to 
divorce  her  husband  for  infidelity,  unless  it  has  been 
accompanied  by  cruelty;  a  man  had  brought  his  mist 
ress  into  his  home  and  compelled  his  wife  to  work  for 
and  wait  upon  her,  and  the  decision  was  that  this  was 
not  cruelty  in  the  meaning  of  the  law ! 

And  if  you  say  that  this  enslavement  of  Woman  has 
nothing  to  do  with  religion — that  ancient  Hebrew 
fables  do  not  control  modern  English  customs — then 
listen  to  the  Vicar  of  Crantock,  preaching  at  St.  Cran- 
tock's,  London,  Aug.  27th,  1905,  and  explaining  why 
women  must  cover  their  heads  in  church : 

(1)  Man's  priority  of  creation.    Adam  was  first  formed, 
then  Eve. 

(2)  The  manner  of  creation.  The  man  is  not  of  the  woman, 
but  the  woman  of  the  man. 

(3)  The  purport  of  creation.   The  man  was  not  created  for 
the  woman,  but  the  woman  for  the  man. 

(4)  Results  in  creation.  The  man  is  the  image  of  the  glory 
of  God,  but  woman  is  the  glory  of  man. 

(5)  Woman's  priority  in  the  fall.   Adam  was  not  deceived; 
but  the  woman,  being  deceived,  was  in  the  transgression. 


172  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

(6)  The  marriage  relation.    As  the  Church  is  subject  to 
Christ,  so  let  the  wives  be  to  their  husbands. 

(7)  The  headship  of  man  and  woman.    The  head  of  every 
man  is  Christ,  but  the  head  of  the  woman  is  man. 

I  say  there  is  no  modern  evil  which  cannot  be  justi 
fied  by  these  ancient  texts;  and  there  is  nowhere  in 
Christendom  a  clergy  which  cannot  be  persuaded  to  cite 
them  at  the  demand  of  ruling  classes.  In  the  city  where 
I  write,  three  clergymen  are  being  sent  to  jail  for  six 
months  for  protesting  against  the  use  of  the  name  of 
Jesus  in  the  wholesale  slaughter  of  men.  Now,  I  am 
backing  this  war.  I  know  that  it  has  to  be  fought,  and 
I  want  to  see  it  fought  as  hard  as  possible ;  but  I  want 
to  leave  Jesus  out  of  it,  for  I  know  that  Jesus  did  not 
believe  in  war,  and  never  could  have  been  brought  to 
support  a  war.  I  object  to  clerical  cant  on  the  subject; 
and  I  note  that  an  eminent  theological  authority,  "Billy" 
Sunday,  appears  to  agree  with  me ;  for  I  find  him  on  the 
front  page  of  my  morning  paper,  assailing  the  three 
pacifist  clergymen,  and  making  his  appeal  not  to 
Jesus,  but  to  the  blood-thirsty  tribal  diety  of  the  an 
cient  Hebrews: 

I  suppose  they  think  they  know  more  than  God  Almighty, 
who  commanded  the  sun  to  stand  still  while  Joshua  won  the  bat 
tle  for  the  Lord;  more  than  the  God  who  made  Samson  strong 
so  he  could  slay  thousands  of  his  nation's  enemies  in  a  right 
eous  cause. 

Right  you  are,  Billy !  And  if  the  capitalist  system 
continues  to  develop  unchecked,  we  shall  some  day  see 
it  dawn  upon  the  masters  of  the  world  how  wasteful  it 
is  to  permit  the  superannuated  workers  to  perish  by 
slow  starvation.  So  much  more  sensible  to  make  use  of 
them !  So  we  shall  have  a  Bible  defense  of  cannibalism ; 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  17$ 

we  shall  hear  our  evangelists  quoting  Leviticus :  'They 
shall  eat  the  flesh  of  their  own  sons  and  daughters." 
Or  perhaps  some  of  our  leisure-class  ladies  might  make 
the  discovery  that  the  flesh  of  working-class  babies  is 
relished  by  pomeranians  and  poodles.  If  so,  the  Billy 
Sundays  of  the  twenty-first  century  may  discover  the 
text :  "Happy  shall  be  he  that  taketh  and  dasheth  thy 
little  ones  against  the  stones." 

Moth  and  Rust 

It  is  especially  interesting  to  notice  what  happens 
when  the  Bible  texts  work  against  the  interests  of  the 
Slavers  and  their  clerical  retainers.  Then  they  are  null 
and  void — and  no  matter  how  precise  and  explicit  and 
unmistakable  they  may  be !  Take  for  example  the  Sab 
bath  injunction:  "Six  days  shalt  thou  labor  and  do  all 
that  thou  hast  to  do."  Karl  Marx  records  of  the  pious 
England  of  his  time  that 

Occasionally  in  rural  districts  a  day-labourer  is  condemned 
to  imprisonment  for  desecrating  the  Sabbath  by  working  in  his 
front  garden.  The  same  labourer  is  punished  for  breach  of  con 
tract  if  he  remains  away  from  his  metal,  paper  or  glass  works 
on  the  Sunday,  even  if  it  be  from  a  religious  whim.  The  ortho 
dox  Parliament  will  hear  nothing  of  Sabbath-breaking  if  it  oc 
curs  in  the  process  of  expanding  capital. 

Or  consider  the  attitude  of  the  Church  in  the  mat 
ter  of  usury.  Throughout  ancient  Hebrew  history  the 
money-lender  was  an  outcast;  both  the  law  and  the 
prophets  denounced  him  without  mercy,  and  it  was 
made  perfectly  clear  that  what  was  meant  was,  not  the 
taking  of  high  interest,  but  the  taking  of  any  interest 
whatsoever.  The  early  church  fathers  were  explicit, 
and  the  Catholic  Church  for  a  thousand  years  con- 


174  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

signed  money-lenders  unhesitatingly  to  hell.  But  then 
came  the  modern  commercial  system,  and  the  money 
lenders  became  the  masters  of  the  world !  There  is  no 
more  amusing  illustration  of  the  perversion  of  human 
thought  than  the  efforts  of  the  Jesuit  casuists  to  escape 
from  the  dilemma  into  which  their  Heavenly  Guides 
had  trapped  them. 

Here,  for  example  is  Alphonso  Ligouri,  a  Spanish 
Jesuit  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  doctor  of  the 
Church,  now  worshipped  as  St.  Alphonsus,  presenting  a 
long  and  elaborate  theory  of  "mental  usury" ;  conclud 
ing  that,  if  the  borrower  pay  interest  of  his  own  free 
will,  the  lender  may  keep  it.  In  answer  to  the  question 
whether  the  lender  may  keep  what  the  borrower  pays, 
not  out  of  gratitude,  but  out  of  fear  that  otherwise 
loans  will  be  refused  to  him  in  future,  Ligouri  says  that 
"to  be  usury,  it  must  be  paid  by  reason  of  a  contract, 
or  as  justly  due;  payment  by  reason  of  such  a  fear 
does  not  cause  interest  to  be  paid  as  an  actual  price." 
Again  the  great  saint  and  doctor  tells  us  that  "it  is  not 
usury  to  exact  something  in  return  for  the  danger  and 
expense  of  regaining  the  principal !"  Could  the  house  of 
J.  P.  Morgan  and  Company  ask  more  of  their  ecclesi 
astical  department? 

The  reader  may  think  that  such  sophistications  are 
now  out  of  date;  but  he  will  find  precisely  the  same 
knavery  in  the  efforts  of  present-day  Slavers  to  fit 
Jesus  Christ  into  the  system  of  competitive  commer 
cialism.  Jesus,  as  we  have  pointed  out,  was  a  carpen 
ter's  son,  a  thoroughly  class-conscious  proletarian.  He 
denounced  the  exploiters  of  his  own  time  with  ferocious 
bitterness,  he  drove  the  money-changers  out  of  the 


THE  PROFITS   OF  RELIGION  175 

temple  with  whips,  and  he  finally  died  the  death  of  a 
common  criminal.  If  he  had  forseen  the  whole  modern 
cycle  of  capitalism  and  wage-slavery,  he  could  hardly 
have  been  more  precise  in  his  exortations  to  his  follow 
ers  to  stand  apart  from  it.  But  did  all  this  avail  him  ? 
Not  in  the  least ! 

I  place  upon  the  witness-stand  an  exponent  of  Bible- 
Christianity  whom  all  readers  of  our  newspapers  know 
well :  a  scholar  of  learning,  a  publicist  of  renown ;  once 
pastor  of  the  most  famous  church  in  Brooklyn ;  now  ed 
itor  of  our  most  influential  religious  weekly;  a  liberal 
both  in  theology  and  politics ;  a  modernist,  an  advocate 
of  what  he  calls  industrial  democracy.  His  name  is  Ly- 
man  Abbott,  and  he  is  writing  under  his  own  signature 
in  his  own  magazine,  his  subject  being  "The  Ethical 
Teachings  of  Jesus".  Several  times  I  have  tried  to  per 
suade  people  that  the  words  I  am  about  to  quote  were 
actually  written  and  published  by  this  eminent  doctor 
of  divinity,  and  people  have  almost  refused  to  believe 
me.  Therefore  I  specify  that  the  article  may  be  found 
in  the  "Outlook",  the  bound  volumes  of  which  are  in  all 
large  libraries:  volume  94,  page  576.  The  words  are 
as  follows,  the  bold  face  being  Dr.  Abbott's,  not  mine : 

My  radical  friend  declares  that  the  teachings  of  Jesus  are 
not  practicable,  that  we  cannot  carry  them  out  in  life,  and  that 
we  do  not  pretend  to  do  so.  Jesus,  he  reminds  us,  said,  'Lay  not 
up  for  yourself  treasures  upon  earth;'  and  Christians  do  uni 
versally  lay  up  for  themselves  treasures  upon  earth;  every  man 
that  owns  a  house  and  lot,  or  a  share  of  stock  in  a  corporation, 
or  a  life  insurance  policy,  or  money  in  a  savings  bank,  has  laid 
up  for  himself  treasure  upon  earth.  But  Jesus  did  not  say,  "Lay 
not  up  for  yourselves  treasures  upon  earth."  He  said,  "Lay  not 
up  for  yourselves  treasures  upon  earth  where  moth  and  rust  doth 
corrupt  and  where  thieves  break  through  and  steal."  And  no 


176  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

sensible  American  does.  Moth  and  rust  do  not  get  at  Mr.  Rocke* 
feller's  oil  wells,  nor  at  the  Sugar  Trust's  sugar,  and  thieves  do 
not  often  break  through  and  steal  a  railway  or  an  insurance 
company  or  a  savings  bank.  What  Jesus  condemned  was  hoard 
ing  wealth. 

Strange  as  it  may  sound  to  some  oi  the  readers  of 
this  book,  I  count  myself  among  the  followers  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth.  His  example  has  meant  more  to  me  than 
that  oi  any  other  man,  and  all  the  experiences  of  my 
revolutionary  life  have  brought  me  nearer  to  him.  Liv 
ing  in  the  great  Metropolis  of  Mammon,  I  have  felt  the 
power  of  Privilege,  its  scourge  upon  my  back,  its  crown 
of  thorns  upon  my  head.  When  I  read  that  article  in 
the  "Outlook",  I  felt  just  as  Jesus  himself  would  have 
felt ;  and  I  sat  down  and  wrote  a  letter — 

To  Lyinan  Abbott 

This  discovery  of  a  new  method  of  interpreting  the 
Bible  is  one  of  such  very  great  interest  and  importance 
that  I  cannot  forbear  to  ask  space  to  comment  upon 
it.  May  I  suggest  that  Dr.  Abbott  elaborate  this  ex 
ceedingly  fruitful  lea,  and  write  us  another  article 
upon  the  extent  to  which  the  teachings  of  the  Inspired 
Word  are  modified  by  modern  conditions,  by  the  prog 
ress  of  invention  and  the  scientific  arts  ?  The  point  of 
view  which  Dr.  Abbott  takes  is  one  which  had  never 
occurred  to  me  before,  and  I  had  therefore  been  com 
pletely  mistaken  as  to  the  attitude  of  Jesus  on  the  ques 
tion.  Also  I  have,  like  Dr.  Abbott,  many  radical  friends 
who  are  still  laboring  under  error. 

Jesus  goes  on  to  bid  his  hearers:  "Consider  the 
lilies  of  the  field,  how  they  grow ;  they  toil  not,  neither 
do  they  spin."  What  an  apt  simile  is  this  for  the  "great 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  177 

mass  of  American  wealth,"  in  Dr.  Abbott's  portrayal  of 
it!  "It  is  serving  the  community,"  he  tells  us;  "it  is 
building  a  railway  to  open  a  new  country  to  settlement 
by  the  homeless;  it  is  operating  a  railway  to  carry 
grain  from  the  harvests  of  the  West  to  the  unfed  mil 
lions  of  the  East,"  etc.  Incidentally,  it  is  piling  up  divi 
dends  for  its  pious  owners ;  and  so  everybody  is  happy 
— and  Jesus,  if  he  should  come  back  to  earth,  could 
never  know  that  he  had  left  the  abodes  of  bliss  above. 

Truly,  there  should  be  a  new  school  of  Bible  inter 
pretation  founded  upon  this  brilliant  idea.  Jesus  says, 
"Therefore  when  thou  cloest  thine  alms,  do  not  sound 
a  trumpet  before  thee,  as  the  hypocrites  do  in  the  syna 
gogues  and  in  the  streets,  that  they  may  have  glory  of 
men."  Verily  not ;  for  of  what  avail  are  trumpets,  com 
pared  with  the  millions  of  copies  of  newspapers  which 
daily  go  forth  to  tell  of  Mr.  Rockefeller's  benefactions  ? 
How  transitory  are  they,  compared  with  the  graven 
marble  or  granite  which  Mr.  Carnegie  sets  upon  the 
front  of  each  of  his  libraries ! 

There  is  the  paragraph,  "Neither  shalt  thou  swear 
by  thy  head,  because  thou  canst  not  make  one  hair 
white  or  black."  I  have  several  among  my  friends  who 
are  Quakers ;  presumably  Dr.  Abbott  has  also ;  and  he 
should  not  fail  to  point  out  to  them  the  changes  which 
scientific  discovery  has  wrought  in  the  significance  of 
this  command  against  swearing.  We  can  now  make 
our  hair  either  white  or  black,  or  a  combination  of 
both.  We  can  make  it  a  brilliant  peroxide  golden;  we 
could,  if  pushed  to  an  extreme,  make  it  purple  or  green. 
So  we  are  clearly  entitled  to  swear  all  we  please  by  our 

head. 
12 


178  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Nor  should  we  forget  to  examine  other  portions  of 
the  Bible  according  to  this  method.  "Look  not  upon  the 
wine  when  it  is  red,"  we  are  told.  Thanks  to  the  activi 
ties  of  that  Capitalism  which  Dr.  Abbott  praises  so 
eloquently,  we  now  make  our  beverages  in  the  chemical 
laboratory,  and  their  color  is  a  matter  of  choice.  Also, 
it  should  be  pointed  out  that  we  have  a  number  of 
pleasant  drinks  which  are  not  wine  at  all — "high-balls" 
and  "gin  rickeys"  and  "peppered  punches";  also  ver- 
mouthe  and  creme  de  menthe  and  absinthe,  which  I  be 
lieve,  are  green  in  hue,  and  therefore  entirely  safe. 

Then  there  are  the  Ten  Commandments.  "Thou 
shalt  not  make  unto  thee  any  graven  image."  See  how 
completely  our  understanding  of  this  command  is 
changed,  so  soon  as  we  realize  that  we  are  free  to  make 
images  of  molten  metal!  And  that  we  may  with  im 
punity  bow  down  to  them  and  worship  them  and  serve 
them — even,  for  instance,  a  Golden  Calf ! 

"The  seventh  day  is  the  sabbath  of  the  Lord  thy 
God;  in  it  thou  shalt  not  do  any  work,  thou,  nor  thy 
son,  nor  thy  daughter,  thy  manservant,  nor  thy  maid 
servant,  nor  thy  cattle,  nor  the  stranger  that  is  within 
thy  gates."  This,  again,  it  will  be  noted,  is  open  to  new 
interpretations.  It  specifies  maidservants,  but  does  not 
prevent  one's  employing  as  many  married  women  as  he 
pleases.  It  also  says  nothing  about  the  various  kinds  of 
labor-saving  machinery  which  we  have  now  taught  to 
work  for  us — sail-boats,  naptha  launches,  yachts,  auto 
mobiles,  and  private  cars — all  of  which  may  be  busily 
occupied  during  the  seventh  day  of  the  week.  The  men 
who  run  these  machines — the  guides,  boatmen,  stokers, 
pilots,  chauffeurs,  and  engineers — would  all  indignant- 


THE  PROFITS   OF  RELIGION  179 

ly  resent  being  regarded  as  "'servants' ,  and  so  they  do 
not  come  under  the  prohibition  any  more  than  the  ma 
chines. 

"Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor's  house,  thou 
shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor's  wife,  nor  his  manservant, 
nor  his  maidservant,  nor  his  ox,  nor  his  ass,  nor  any 
thing  that  is  thy  neighbor's."  I  read  this  paragraph 
over  for  the  first  time  in  quite  a  while,  and  I  came  with 
a  jolt  to  its  last  words.  I  had  been  intending  to  point 
out  that  it  said  nothing  about  a  neighbor's  automobile, 
nor  a  neighbor's  oil  wells,  sugar  trusts,  insurance  com 
panies  and  savings  banks.  The  last  words,  however, 
stop  one  ofj  abruptly.  One  is  almost  tempted  to  imagine 
that  the  Divine  _nteliigence  must  have  foreseen  Dr.  Ab 
bott's  ingenious  method  of  interpretation,  and  taken  this 
precaution  against  him.  And  this  was  a  great  surprise 
to  me — for,  truly,  I  had  not  supposed  it  possible  that 
such  an  interpretation  could  have  been  foreseen,  even  by 
Omniscience  itself.  I  will  conclude  this  communication 
by  venturing  the  assertion  that  it  could  not  have  been 
foreseen  by  any  other  person  or  thing,  in  the  heavens 
above,  on  the  earth  beneath,  or  the  waters  under  the> 
earth.  Dr.  Abbott  may  accept  my  congratulations  upon 
having  achieved  the  most  ingenious  and  masterful  ex 
hibition  of  casuistical  legerdemain  that  it  has  ever  been 
my  fortune  to  encounter  in  my  readings  in  the  litera 
tures  of  some  thirty  centuries  and  seven  different  lan 
guages. 

And  I  wifl  also  add  that  1  respectfully  challenge  Dr. 
Abbott  to  publish  this  letter.  And  I  announce  to  him  in 
advance  that  if  he  refuses  to  publish  it,  I  will  cause  it 
to  be  published  upon  the  first  page  of  the  "Appeal  to 


180  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Reason",  where  it  will  be  read  by  some  five  hundred 
thousand  Socialists,  and  by  them  set  before  several  mil 
lion  followers  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  world's  first  and 
greatest  revolutionist,  whom  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  has 
traduced  and  betrayed  by  the  most  amazing  piece  of 
theological  knavery  that  it  has  ever  been  my  fortune  to 
encounter. 

The  Octopus 

Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  published  this  letter!  In  his 
editorial  comment  thereon  he  said  that  he  did  not  know 
which  of  two  biblical  injunctions  to  follow:  "Answer 
not  a  fool  according  to  his  folly,  lest  thou  be  thought 
like  unto  him" ;  or  "Answer  a  fool  according  to  his  folly, 
lest  he  be  wise  in  his  own  conceit".  I  replied  by  pointing 
out  a  third  text  which  the  Eeverend  Doctor  had  pos 
sibly  overlooked :  "He  that  calleth  his  neighbor  a  fool 
shall  be  in  danger  of  hell-fire."  But  the  Reverend  Doc 
tor  took  refuge  in  his  dignity,  and  I  bided  my  time  and 
waited  for  that  revenge  which  comes  sooner  or  later  to 
us  muck-rakers.  In  this  case  it  came  speedily.  The 
story  is  such  a  perfect  illustration  of  the  functions  of 
religion  as  oil  to  the  machinery  of  graft  that  I  ask  the 
reader's  permission  to  recite  it  at  length. 

For  a  couple  of  decades  the  political  and  financial 
life  of  New  England  has  been  dominated  by  a  gigantic 
aggregation  of  capital,  the  New  York,  New  Haven  and 
Hartford  Railroad.  It  is  a  "Morgan"  concern ;  its  pop 
ular  name,  "The  New  Haven",  stands  for  all  the  rail 
roads  of  six  states,  nearly  all  the  trolley-lines  and 
steamship-lines,  and  a  group  of  the  most  powerful 
banks  of  Boston  and  New  York.  It  is  controlled  by  a 
little  group  of  insiders,  who  followed  the  custom  of  rail- 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  181 

road-wrecking  familiar  to  students  of  American  indus 
trial  life :  buying  up  new  lines,  capitalizing  them  at 
fabulous  sums,  and  unloading  them  on  the  investing 
public ;  paying  dividends  out  of  capital,  "passing"  divi 
dends  as  a  means  of  stock  manipulation,  accumulating 
surpluses  and  cutting  "melons"  for  the  insiders,  whilo 
at  the  same  time  crushing  labor  unions,  squeezing 
wages,  and  permitting  rolling-stock  and  equipment  to 
go  to  wreck. 

All  these  facts  were  perfectly  well  known  in  Wall 
Street,  and  could  not  have  escaped  the  knowledge  of 
any  magazine  editor  dealing  with  current  events.  In 
eight  years  the  "New  Haven"  had  increased  its  cap 
italization  1501  per  cent;  and  what  that  meant,  any 
office  boy  in  "the  Street"  could  have  told.  What  atti 
tude  should  a  magazine  editor  take  to  the  matter? 

At  that  time  there  were  still  two  or  three  free  mag 
azines  in  America.  One  of  them  was  Hampton's,  and 
the  story  of  its  wrecking  by  the  New  Haven  criminals 
will  some  day  serve  in  school  text-books  as  the  classic 
illustration  of  that  financial  piracy  which  brought  on 
the  American  social  revolution.  Ben  Hampton  had 
bought  the  old  derelict  "Broadway  Magazine",  with 
twelve  thousand  subscribers,  and  in  four  years,  by  the 
simple  process  of  straight  truth-telling,  had  built  up 
for  it  a  circulation  of  440,000.  In  two  years  more  he 
would  have  had  a  million;  but  in  May,  1911,  he  an 
nounced  a  series  of  articles  dealing  with  the  New  Hav 
en  management. 

The  articles,  written  by  Charles  Edward  Russell, 
were  so  exact  that  they  read  today  like  the  reports  of 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  dated  three 


182  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

years  later.  A  representative  of  the  New  Haven  called 
upon  the  editor  of  Hampton's  with  a  proof  of  the  first 
article — obtained  from  the  printer  by  bribery — and  was 
invited  to  specify  the  statements  to  which  he  took  ex 
ception  ;  in  the  presence  of  witnesses  he  went  over  the 
article  line  by  line,  and  specified  two  minor  errors, 
which  were  at  once  corrected.  At  the  end  of  the  con 
ference  he  announced  that  if  the  articles  were  published, 
Hampton's  Magazine  would  be  "on  the  rocks  in  ninety 
days." 

Which  threat  was  carried  out  to  the  letter.  First 
came  a  campaign  among  the  advertisers  of  the  maga 
zine,  which  lost  an  income  of  thousands  of  dollars  a 
month,  almost  over  night.  And  then  came  a  campaign 
among  the  banks — the  magazine  could  not  get  credit. 
Anyone  familiar  with  the  publishing  business  will  un 
derstand  that  a  magazine  which  is  growing  rapidly  has 
to  have  advances  to  meet  each  month's  business. 
Hampton  undertook  to  raise  the  money  by  selling 
stock;  whereupon  a  spy  was  introduced  into  his  office 
as  bookkeeper,  his  list  of  subscribers  was  stolen,  and 
a  campaign  was  begun  to  destroy  their  confidence. 

It  happened  that  I  was  in  Hampton's  office  in  the 
summer  of  1911,  when  the  crisis  came.  Money  had  to 
be  had  to  pay  for  a  huge  new  edition ;  and  upon  a  prop 
erty  worth  two  millions  of  dollars,  with  endorsements 
worth  as  much  again,  it  was  impossible  to  borrow  thirty 
thousand  dollars  in  the  city  of  New  York.  Bankers, 
personal  friends  of  the  publisher,  stated  quite  openly 
that  word  had  gone  out  that  any  one  who  loaned  money 
to  him  would  be  "broken".  I  myself  sent  telegrams  to 
everyone  I  knew  who  might  by  any  chance  be  able  to 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  183 

help;  but  there  was  no  help,  and  Hampton  retired 
without  a  dollar  to  his  name,  and  the  magazine  was  sold 
under  the  hammer  to  a  concern  which  immediately 
wrecked  it  and  discontinued  publication. 

The  Industrial  Shelley 

Such  was  the  fate  of  an  editor  who  opposed  the 
"New  Haven".  And  now,  what  of  those  editors  who 
supported  it?  Turn  to  "The  Outlook,  a  Weekly  Journal 
of  Current  Events,"  edited  by  Lyman  Abbott — the 
issue  of  Dec.  25th,  nineteen  hundred  and  nine  years 
after  Christ  came  down  to  bring  peace  on  earth  and 
good-will  toward  Wall  Street.  You  will  there  find  an 
article  by  Sylvester  Baxter  entitled  "The  Upbuilding  of 
a  Great  Railroad/'  It  is  the  familiar  "slush"  article 
which  we  professional  writers  learn  to  know  at  a  glance. 
"Prodigious",  Mr.  Baxter  tells  us,  has  been  the  progress 
of  the  New  Haven ;  this  was  "a  masterstroke",  that  was 
"characteristically  sagacious".  The  road  had  made 
"prodigious  expenditures",  and  to  a  noble  end :  "Trans 
portation  efficiency  epitomizes  the  broad  aim  that  ani 
mated  these  expenditures  and  other  constructive  ac 
tivities."  There  are  photographs  of  bridges  and  sta 
tions— "vast  terminal  improvements",  "a  masterpiece 
of  modern  engineering",  "the  highest,  greatest  and 
most  architectural  of  bridges".  Of  the  official  under 
whom  these  miracles  were  being  wrought — President 
Mellen — we  read:  "Nervously  organized,  of  delicate 
sensibility,  impulsive  in  utterance,  yet  with  an  extra 
ordinarily  convincing  power  for  vividly  logical  presen 
tation."  An  industrial  Shelley,  or  a  Milton,  you  per 
ceive  ;  and  all  this  prodigious  genius  poured  out  for  the 
general  welfare!  "To  study  out  the  sort  of  transpor- 


184  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

tation  service  best  adapted  to  these  ends,  and  then  to 
provide  it  in  the  most  efficient  form  possible,  that  is  the 
life-task  that  President  Mellen  has  set  himself." 

There  was  no  less  than  sixteen  pages  of  these  rap 
tures — quite  a  section  of  a  small  magazine  like  the 
"Outlook".  "The  New  Haven  ramifies  to  every  spot 
where  industry  flourishes,  where  business  thrives." 
"As  a  purveyor  of  transportation  it  supplies  the  public 
with  just  the  sort  desired."  "Here  we  have  the  new 
efficiency  in  a  nutshell."  In  short,  here  we  have  what 
Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  means  when  he  glorifies  "the  great 
mass  of  American  wealth".  "It  is  serving  the  commun 
ity;  it  is  building  a  railway  to  open  a  new  country  to 
settlement  by  the  homeless ;  it  is  operating  a  railway  to 
carry  grain  from  the  harvests  of  the  West  to  the  unfed 
millions  of  the  East,"  etc.  The  unfed  millions — my 
typewriter  started  to  write  "underfed  millions" — are 
humbly  grateful  for  these  services,  and  hasten  to  buy 
copies  of  the  pious  weekly  which  tells  about  them. 

The  "Outlook"  runs  a  column  of  "current  events" 
in  which  it  tells  what  is  happening  in  the  world;  and 
sometimes  it  is  compelled  to  tell  of  happenings  against 
the  interests  of  "the  great  mass  of  American  wealth". 
The  cynical  reader  will  find  amusement  in  following  its 
narrative  of  the  affairs  of  the  New  Haven  during  the 
five  years  subsequent  to  the  publication  of  the  Baxter 
article. 

First  came  the  collapse  of  the  road's  service;  a 
series  of  accidents  so  frightful  that  they  roused  even 
clergymen  and  chambers  of  commerce  to  protest.  A 
number  of  the  "Outlook's"  subscribers  are  New  Haven 
"commuters",  and  the  magazine  could  not  fail  to  refer 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  185 

to  their  troubles.  In  the  issue  of  Jan.  4th,  1913,  three 
years  and  ten  days  after  the  Baxter  rhapsody,  we 
read: 

The  most  numerous  accidents  on  a  single  road  since  the  last 
fiscal  year  have  been,  we  believe,  those  on  the  New  Haven.  In 
the  opinion  of  the  Connecticut  Commission,  the  Westport  wreck 
would  not  have  occurred  if  the  railway  company  had  followed 
the  recommendation  of  the  Chief  Inspector  of  Safety  Appliances 
of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  in  its  report  on  a  sim 
ilar  accident  at  Bridgeport  a  year  ago. 

And  by  June  28th,  matters  had  gone  farther  yet ;  we 
find  the  "Outlook"  reporting: 

Within  a  few  hours  of  the  collision  at  Stamford,  the  wrecked 
Pullman  car  was  taken  away  and  burned.  Is  this  criminal  de 
struction  of  evidence  ? 

This  collapse  of  the  railroad  service  started  a  clamor 
for  investigation  by  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commis 
sion,  which  of  course  brought  terror  to  the  bosoms  of 
the  plunderers.  On  Dec.  20, 1913,  we  find  the  "Outlook" 
"putting  the  soft  pedal"  on  the  public  indignation.  "It 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  such  a  road  as  the  New 
Haven  is,  in  fact  if  not  in  terms,  a  National  possession, 
and  as  it  goes  down  or  up,  public  interests  go  down  or 
up  with  it."  But  in  spite  of  all  pious  admonitions,  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission  yielded  to  the  public 
clamor,  and  an  investigation  was  made — revealing  such 
conditions  of  rottenness  as  to  shock  even  the  clerical  re 
tainers  of  Privilege.  "Securities  were  inflated,  debt  was 
heaped  upon  debt",  reports  the  horrified  "Outlook"; 
and  when  its  hero,  Mr.  Mellen — its  industrial  Shelley, 
"nervously  organized,  of  delicate  sensibility" — admitted 
that  he  had  no  authority  as  to  the  finances  of  the  road 
and  no  understanding  of  them,  but  had  taken  all  his 


186  THE  PKOFITS  OF  RELIGION 

orders  from  Morgan,  the  "Outlook"  remarks,  deeply 
wounded:  "A  pitiable  position  for  the  president  of  a 
great  railway  to  assume."  A  little  later,  when  things 
got  hotter  yet,  we  read : 

In  the  search  for  truth  the  Commissioners  had  to  overcome 
many  obstacles,  such  as  the  burning  of  books,  letters  and  docu 
ments,  and  the  obstinacy  of  witnesses,  who  declined  to  testify 
until  criminal  proceedings  were  begun.  The  New  Haven  system 
has  more  than  three  hundred  subsidiary  corporations  in  a  web 
of  entangling  alliances,  many  of  which  were  seemingly  planned, 
created  and  manipulated  by  lawyers  expressly  retained  for  the 
purpose  of  concealment  or  deception. 

But  do  you  imagine  even  that  would  sicken  the 
pious  jackals  of  their  offal?  If  so,  you  do  not  know 
the  sturdiness  of  the  pious  stomach.  A  compromise 
was  patched  up  between  the  government  and  the 
thieves  who  were  too  big  to  be  prosecuted ;  this  bargain 
was  not  kept  by  the  thieves,  and  President  Wilson  de 
clared  in  a  public  statement  that  the  New  Haven  ad 
ministration  had  "broken  an  agreement  deliberately 
and  solemnly  entered  into,"  in  a  manner  to  the  Presi 
dent  "inexplicable  and  entirely  without  justification." 
Which,  of  course,  seemed  to  the  "Outlook"  dreadfully 
impolite  language  to  be  used  concerning  a  "National 
possession";  it  hastened  to  rebuke  President  Wilson, 
whose  statement  was  "too  severe  and  drastic." 

A  new  compromise  was  made  between  the  govern 
ment  and  the  thieves  who  were  too  big  to  be  prosecuted, 
and  the  stealing  went  on.  Now,  as  I  work  over  this 
book,  the  President  takes  the  railroads  for  war  use, 
and  reads  to  Congress  a  message  proposing  that  the 
securities  based  upon  the  New  Haven  swindles,  togeth 
er  with  all  the  mass  of  other  railroad  swindles,  shall 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  187 

be  sanctified  and  secured  by  dividends  paid  out  of  the 
public  purse.  New  Haven  securities  take  a  big  jump; 
and  the  "Outlook",  needless  to  say,  is  enthusiastic  for 
the  President's  policy.  Here  is  a  chance  for  the  big 
thieves  to  baptize  themselves — or  shall  we  say  to  have 
the  water  in  their  stocks  made  "holy"  ?  Says  our  pious 
editor,  for  the  government  to  take  property  without 
full  compensation  "would  be  contrary  to  the  whole 
spirit  of  America." 

The  Outlook  for  Graft 

Anyone  familiar  with  the  magazine  world  will  un 
derstand  that  such  crooked  work  as  this,  continued 
over  a  long  period,  is  not  done  for  nothing.  Any  maga 
zine  writer  would  know,  the  instant  he  saw  the  Baxter 
article,  that  Baxter  was  paid  by  the  New  Haven,  and 
that  the  "Outlook"  also  was  paid  by  the  New  Haven. 
Generally  he  has  no  way  of  proving  such  facts,  and  has 
to  sit  in  silence;  but  when  his  board  bill  falls  due  and 
his  landlady  is  persistent,  he  experiences  a  direct  and 
earnest  hatred  of  the  crooks  of  journalism  who  thrive 
at  his  expense.  If  he  is  a  Socialist,  he  looks  forward  to 
the  day  when  he  may  sit  on  a  Publications'  Graft  Com 
mission,  with  access  to  all  magazine  books  which  have 
not  yet  been  burned ! 

In  the  case  of  the  New  Haven,  we  know  a  part  of 
the  price — thanks  to  the  labors  of  the  Interstate  Com 
merce  Commission.  Needless  to  say,  you  will  not  find 
the  facts  recorded  in  the  columns  of  the  Outlook;  you 
might  have  read  it  line  by  line  from  the  palmy  days  of 
Mellen  to  our  own,  and  you  would  have  got  no  hint 
«f  what  the  Commission  revealed  about  magazine  and 


188  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

newspaper  graft.  Nor  would  you  have  got  much  more 
from  the  great  metropolitan  dailies,  which  systematic 
ally  "played  down"  the  expose,  omitting  all  the  really 
damaging  details.  You  would  have  to  go  to  the  reports 
of  the  Commission — or  to  the  files  of  "Pearson's  Maga 
zine",  which  is  out  of  print  and  not  found  in  libraries ! 

According  to  the  New  Haven's  books,  and  by  the 
admission  of  its  own  officials,  the  road  was  spending 
more  than  four  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year  to  in 
fluence  newspapers  and  magazines  in  favor  of  its  pol 
icies.  (President  Mellen  stated  that  this  was  relatively 
less  than  any  other  railroad  in  the  country  was  spend 
ing).  There  was  a  professor  of  the  Harvard  Law 
School,  going  about  lecturing  to  boards  of  trade,  urging 
in  the  name  of  economic  science  the  repeal  of  laws 
against  railroad  monopolies — and  being  paid  for  his 
speeches  out  of  railroad  funds !  There  was  a  swarm  of 
newspaper  reporters,  writing  on  railroad  affairs  for 
the  leading  papers  of  New  England,  and  getting  twenty- 
five  dollars  weekly,  or  two  or  three  hundred  on  special 
occasions.  Sums  had  been  paid  directly  to  more  than 
a  thousand  newspapers — $3,000  to  the  Boston  "Re 
public",  and  when  the  question  was  asked  "Why?" 
the  answer  was,  "That  is  Mayor  Fitzgerald's  paper." 
Even  the  ultra-respectable  "Evening  Transcript",  or 
gan  of  the  Brahmins  of  culture,  was  down  for  $144  for 
typing,  mimeographing  and  sending  out  "dope"  to  the 
country  press.  There  was  an  item  of  $381  for  15,000 
"Prayers" ;  and  when  asked  about  that  President  Mel 
len  explained  that  it  referred  to  a  pamphlet  called 
"Prayers  from  the  Hills",  embodying  the  yearnings  of 
the  back-country  people  for  trolley-franchises  to  be 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  189 

issued  to  the  New  Haven.  Asked  why  the  pamphlet  was 
called  "Prayers",  Mr.  Mellen  explained  that  "there  was 
lots  of  biblical  language  in  it." 

And  now  we  come  to  the  "Outlook" ;  after  five  years 
of  waiting,  we  catch  our  pious  editors  with  the  goods 
on  them!  There  appears  on  the  pay-roll  of  the  New 
Haven,  as  one  of  its  regular  press-agents,  getting  sums 
like  $500  now  and  then — would  you  think  it  possible  ? — 
Sylvester  Baxter!  And  worse  yet,  there  appears  an 
item  of  $938.64  to  the  "Outlook",  for  a  total  of  9,716 
copies  of  its  issue  of  Dec.  25th,  nineteen  hundred  and 
nine  years  after  Christ  came  to  bring  peace  on  earth 
and  good  will  towards  Wall  Street! 

The  writer  makes  a  specialty  of  fair  play,  even  when 
dealing  with  those  who  have  never  practiced  it  towards 
him.  He  wrote  a  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  "Outlook", 
asking  what  the  magazine  might  have  to  say  upon  this 
matter.  The  reply,  signed  by  Lawrence  F.  Abbott,  Pres 
ident  of  the  "Outlook"  Company,  was  that  the  "Out 
look"  did  not  know  that  Mr.  Baxter  had  any  salaried 
connection  with  the  New  Haven,  and  that  they  had  paid 
him  for  the  article  at  the  usual  rates.  Against  this 
statement  must  be  set  one  made  under  oath  by  the  offi 
cial  of  the  New  Haven  who  had  the  disbursing  of  the 
corruption  fund — that  the  various  papers  which  used 
the  railroad  material  paid  nothing  for  it,  and  "they  all 
knew  where  it  came  from."  Mr.  Lawrence  Abbott  states 
that  "the  New  Haven  Railroad  bought  copies  of  the 
'Outlook'  without  any  previous  understanding  or  ar 
rangement  as  anybody  is  entitled  to  buy  copies  of  the 
'Outlook'."  I  might  point  out  that  this  does  not  really 
say  as  much  as  it  seems  to ;  for  the  President  of  every 


190  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

magazine  company  in  America  knows  without  any  pre 
vious  understanding  or  arrangement  that  any  time  he 
cares  to  print  an  article  such  as  Mr.  Baxter's,  dealing 
with  the  affairs  of  a  great  corporation,  he  can  sell  ten 
thousand  copies  to  that  corporation.  The  late  unla- 
mented  Elbert  Hubbard  wrote  a  defense  of  the  Rocke 
feller  slaughter  of  coal-miners,  published  it  in  "The 
Fra,"  and  came  down  to  New  York  and  unloaded  sev 
eral  tons  at  26  Broadway ;  he  did  the  same  thing  in  the 
case  of  the  copper  strike  in  Michigan,  and  again  in  the 
case  of  "The  Jungle" — and  all  this  without  the  slightest 
claim  to  divine  inspiration  or  authority ! 

Mr.  Abbott  answers  another  question:  "We  cer 
tainly  did  not  return  the  amount  to  the  railroad  com 
pany."  Well,  a  sturdy  conscience  must  be  a  comfort 
to  its  possessor.  The  President  of  the  "Outlook"  is  in 
the  position  of  a  pawnbroker  caught  with  stolen  goods 
in  his  establishment.  He  had  no  idea  they  were  stolen ; 
and  we  might  believe  it,  if  the  thief  were  obscure.  But 
when  the  thief  is  the  most  notorious  in  the  city — when 
his  picture  has  been  in  the  paper  a  thousand  times? 
And  when  the  thief  swears  that  the  broker  knew  him  ? 
And  when  the  broker's  shop  is  full  of  other  suspicious 
goods?  Why  did  the  "Outlook"  practically  take  back 
Mr.  Spahr's  revelations  concerning  the  Powder  barony 
of  Delaware?  Why  did  it  support  so  vigorously  the 
Standard  Oil  ticket  for  the  control  of  the  Mutual  Life 
Insurance  Company — and  with  James  Stillman,  one  of 
the  heads  of  Standard  Oil,  president  of  Standard  Oil's 
big  bank  in  New  York,  secretly  one  of  its  biggest  stock 
holders  ! 

Also,  why  does  the  magazine  refuse  to  give  its 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  191 

readers  a  chance  to  judge  its  conduct?  Why  is  it  that 
a  search  of  its  columns  reveals  no  mention  of  the  reve 
lations  concerning  Mr.  Baxter — not  even  any  mention 
of  the  $400,000  slush  fund  of  its  paragon  of  transporta 
tion  virtues?  I  asked  that  question  in  my  letter,  and 
the  president  of  the  "Outlook"  Company  for  some  rea 
son  failed  to  notice  it.  I  wrote  a  second  time,  courteous 
ly  reminding  him  of  the  omission ;  and  also  of  another, 
equally  significant — he  had  not  informed  me  whether 
any  of  the  editors  of  the  "Outlook",  or  the  officers  or 
directors  of  the  Company,  were  stockholders  in  the 
New  Haven.  His  final  reply  was  that  the  questions 
seem  to  him  "wholly  unimportant" ;  he  does  not  know 
whether  the  "Outlook"  published  anything  about  the 
Baxter  revelations,  nor  does  he  know  whether  any  of 
the  editors  or  officers  or  directors  of  the  "Outlook" 
Company  are  or  ever  have  been  stockholders  of  the 
New  York,  New  Haven  and  Hartford  Railroad  Com 
pany.  The  fact  "would  not  in  the  slightest  degree  affect 
either  favorably  or  unfavorably  our  editorial  treatment 
of  that  corporation."  Caesar's  wife,  it  appears  is  above 
suspicion — even  when  she  is  caught  in  a  brothel ! 

Clerical  Camouflage 

I  have  seen  a  photograph  from  "Somewhere  in 
France",  showing  a  wayside  shrine  with  a  statue  of  the 
Virgin  Mary,  innocent  and  loving,  with  her  babe  in  her 
arms.  If  you  were  a  hostile  aviator,  you  might  sail  over 
and  take  pictures  to  your  heart's  content,  and  you 
would  see  nothing  but  a  saintly  image ;  you  would  have 
to  be  on  the  enemy's  side,  and  behind  the  lines,  to  make 
the  discovery  that  under  the  image  had  been  dug  a  hole 


192  THE  PKOFITS  OF  RELIGION 

for  a  machine-gun.  When  I  saw  that  picture,  I  thought 
to  myself — there  is  capitalist  Religion ! 

You  see,  if  cannon  and  machine-guns  are  out  in  the 
open,  they  are  almost  instantly  spotted  and  put  out  of 
action;  and  so  with  magazines  like  "Leslie's  Weekly", 
or  "Munsey's",  or  the  "North  American  Review",  which 
are  frankly  and  wholly  in  the  interest  of  Big  Business. 
If  an  editor  wishes  really  to  be  effective  in  holding  back 
progress,  he  must  protect  himself  with  a  camouflage  of 
piety  and  philanthropy,  he  must  have  at  his  tongue's 
end  the  phrases  of  brotherhood  and  justice,  he  must  be 
liberal  and  progressive,  going  a  certain  cautious  dis 
tance  with  the  reformers,  indulging  in  carefully  mea 
sured  fair  play — giving  a  dime  with  one  hand,  while 
taking  back  a  dollar  with  the  other ! 

Let  us  have  an  illustration  of  this  clerical  camou 
flage.  Here  are  the  wives  and  children  of  the  Colorado 
coal-miners  being  shot  and  burned  in  their  beds  by 
Rockefeller  gun-men,  and  the  press  of  the  entire  coun 
try  in  a  conspiracy  of  silence  concerning  the  matter.  In 
the  effort  to  break  down  this  conspiracy,  Bouck  White, 
Congregational  clergyman,  author  of  "The  Call  of  the 
Carpenter",  goes  to  the  Fifth  Avenue  Church  of  Stand 
ard  Oil  and  makes  a  protest  in  the  name  of  Jesus.  I  do 
not  wish  to  make  extreme  statements,  but  I  have  read 
history  pretty  thoroughly,  and  I  really  do  not  know 
where  in  nineteen  hundred  years  you  can  find  an  action 
more  completely  in  the  spirit  and  manner  of  Jesus  than 
that  of  Bouck  White.  The  only  difference  was  that 
whereas  Jesus  took  a  real  whip  and  lashed  the  money 
changers,  White  politely  asked  the  pastor  to  discuss  with 
him  the  question  whether  or  not  Jesus  condemned  the 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  193 

holding  of  wealth.  He  even  took  the  precaution  to  write 
a  letter  to  the  clergyman  announcing  in  advance  what 
he  intended  to  do !  And  how  did  the  clergyman  prepare 
for  him  ?  With  the  sword  of  truth  and  the  armor  of  the 
spirit?  No — but  with  two  or  three  dozen  strong-arm 
men,  who  flung  themselves  upon  the  Socialist  author 
and  hurled  him  out  of  the  church.  So  violent  were  they 
that  several  of  White's  friends,  also  one  or  two  casual 
spectators,  were  moved  to  protest;  what  happened 
then,  let  us  read  in  the  New  York  "Sun",  the  most  bit 
terly  hostile  to  radicalism  of  all  the  metropolitan  news 
papers.  Says  the  "Sun's'  report : 

A  police  billy  came  crunching  against  the  bones  of  Lopez's 
legs.  It  struck  him  as  hard  as  a  man  could  swing  it  eight  times. 
A  fist  planted  on  Lopez's  jaw  knocked  out  two  teeth.  His  lip 
was  torn  open.  A  blow  in  the  eye  made  it  swell  and  blacken 
instantly.  A  minute  later  Lopez  was  leaning  against  the  church 
with  blood  running  to  the  doorsill. 

And  now,  what  has  the  clerical  camouflage  to  say  on 
this  proceeding  ?  Does  it  approve  it  ?  Oh  no !  It  was  "a 
mistake",  the  "Outlook"  protests ;  it  intensifies  the  hat 
red  which  these  extremists  feel  for  the  church.  The 
proper  course  would  have  been  to  turn  the  disturber 
aside  with  a  soft  answer;  to  give  him  some  place,  say 
in  a  park,  where  he  could  talk  his  head  off  to  people  of 
his  own  sort,  while  good  and  decent  Christians  con 
tinued  to.  worship  by  themselves  in  peace,  and  to  have 
the  children  of  their  mine-slaves  shot  and  burned  in 
their  beds.  Says  our  pious  editor: 

The  true  way  to  repress  cranks  is  not  to  suppress  them;  it 
is  to  give  them  an  opportunity  to  air  their  theories  before  any 
who  wish  to  learn,  while  forbidding  them  to  compel  those  te 

listen  who  do  not  wish  to  do  so. 
11 


194  THE  PKOFITS  or  RELIGION 

Or  take  another  case.  Twelve  years  ago  the  writer 
made  an  effort  to  interest  the  American  people  in  the 
conditions  of  labor  in  their  packing-plants.  It  happened 
that  incidentally  I  gave  some  facts  about  the  bedevil- 
ment  of  the  public's  meat-supply,  and  the  public  really 
did  care  about  that.  As  I  phrased  it  at  the  time,  I  aimed 
at  the  public's  heart,  and  by  accident  I  hit  it  in  the 
stomach.  There  was  a  terrible  clamor,  and  Congress 
was  forced  to  pass  a  bill  to  remedy  the  evils.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  this  bill  was  a  farce,  but  the  public  was 
satisfied,  and  soon  forgot  the  matter  entirely.  The  point 
to  be  noted  here  is  that  so  far  as  concerned  the  atro 
cious  miseries  of  the  working-people,  it  was  not  neces 
sary  even  to  pretend  to  do  anything.  The  slaves  of 
Packingtown  went  on  living  and  working  as  they  were 
described  as  doing  in  "The  Jungle",  and  nobody  gave  a 
further  thought  to  them.  Only  the  other  day  I  read  in 
my  paper — while  we  are  all  making  sacrifices  in  a  "War 
for  Democracy" — that  Armour  and  Company  had  paid 
a  dividend  of  twenty-one  per  cent,  and  Swift  and  Com 
pany  a  dividend  of  thirty-five  per  cent. 

This  prosperity  they  owe  in  good  part  to  their 
clerical  camouflage.  Listen  to  our  pious  "Outlook",  en 
gaged  in  countermining  "The  Jungle".  The  "Outlook" 
has  no  doubt  that  there  are  genuine  evils  in  the  pack 
ing-plants;  the  conditions  of  the  workers  ought  of 
course  to  be  improved ;  BUT — 

To  disgust  the  reader  by  dragging  him  through  every  con 
ceivable  horror,  physical  and  moral,  to  depict  with  lurid  excite 
ment  and  with  offensive  minuteness  the  life  in  jail  and  brothel — 
all  this  is  to  overreach  the  object ....  Even  things  actually  ter 
rible  may  become  distorted  when  a  writer  screams  them  out  in 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  195 

a  sensational  way  and  in  a  high  pitched  key More  con 
vincing  if  it  were  less  hysterical. 

Don't  you  see  what  these  clerical  crooks  are  for  ? 
The  Jungle 

A  four  years'  war  was  fought  in  America,  a  million 
men  were  killed  and  half  a  continent  was  devastated,  in 
order  to  abolish  chattel  slavery  and  put  wage  slavery  in 
its  place.  I  have  made  a  thorough  study  of  both  these 
industrial  systems,  and  I  freely  admit  that  there  is  one 
respect  in  which  the  lot  of  the  wage  slave  is  better  than 
that  of  the  chattel  slave.  The  wage  slave  is  free  to 
think ;  and  by  squeezing  a  few  drops  of  blood  from  his 
starving  body,  he  may  possess  himself  of  machinery 
for  the  distribution  of  his  ideas.  Taking  his  chances  of 
the  policeman's  club  and  the  jail,  he  may  found  revolu 
tionary  organizations,  and  so  he  has  the  candle  of  hope 
to  light  him  to  his  death-bed.  But  excepting  this  con 
sideration,  and  taking  the  circumstances  of  the  wage 
slave  from  the  material  point  of  view  alone,  I  hold  it 
beyond  question  that  the  average  lot  of  the  chattel 
slave  of  1860  was  preferable  to  that  of  the  modern  slave 
of  the  Beef  Trust,  the  Steel  Trust,  or  the  Coal  Trust. 
It  was  the  Southern  master's  real  concern,  his  business 
interest,  that  the  chattel  slave  should  be  kept  physical 
ly  sound ;  but  it  is  nobody's  business  to  care  anything 
about  the  wage  slave.  The  children  of  the  chattel  slave 
were  valuable  property,  and  so  they  got  plenty  to  eat, 
and  a  happy  outdoor  life,  and  medical  attention  if  they 
fell  ill.  But  the  children  of  the  sweat-shop  or  the  cot 
ton-mill  or  the  canning-factory  are  raised  in  a  city  slum, 
and  never  know  what  it  is  to  have  enough  to  eat,  never 
know  a  feeling  of  security  or  rest — 


196  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

We  are  weary  in  our  cradles 

From  our  mother's  toil  untold; 

We  are  born  to  hoarded  weariness 
As  some  to  hoarded  gold. 

The  system  of  competitive  commercialism,  of  large- 
scale  capitalist  industry  in  its  final  flowering!  I  quote 
from  "The  Jungle": 

Here  in  this  city  tonight,  ten  thousand  women  are  shut  up  i»» 
foul  pens,  and  driven  by  hunger  to  sell  their  bodies  to  live.  To 
night  in  Chicago  there  are  ten  thousand  men,  homeless  and 
wretched,  willing  to  work  and  begging  for  a  chance,  yet  starving, 
and  fronting  with  terror  the  awful  winter  cold!  Tonight  in  Chi 
cago  there  are  a  hundred  thousand  children  wearing  out  their 
strength  and  blasting  their  lives  in  the  effort  to  earn  their  bread! 
There  are  a  hundred  thousand  mothers  who  are  living  in  misery 
and  squalor,  struggling  to  earn  enough  to  feed  their  little  ones! 
There  are  a  hundred  thousand  old  people,  cast  off  and  helpless, 
waiting  for  death  to  take  them  from  their  torments!  There  are 
a  million  people,  men  and  women  and  children,  who  share  the 
curse  of  the  wage-slave;  who  toil  every  hour  they  can  stand  and 
see,  for  just  enough  to  keep  them  alive;  who  are  condemned  till 
the  end  of  their  days  to  monotony  and  weariness,  to  hunger  and 
misery,  to  heat  and  cold,  to  dirt  and  disease,  to  ignorance  and 
drunkenness  and  vice!  And  then  turn  over  the  page  with  me, 
and  gaze  upon  the  other  side  of  the  picture.  There  are  a  thou 
sand — ten  thousand,  maybe — who  are  the  masters  of  these 
slaves,  who  own  their  toil.  They  do  nothing  to  earn  what  they 
receive,  they  do  not  even  have  to  ask  for  it — it  comes  to  them 
of  itself,  their  only  care  is  to  dispose  of  it.  They  live  in  palaces, 
they  riot  in  luxury  and  extravagance — such  as  no  words  can  de 
scribe,  as  makes  the  imagination  reel  and  stagger,  makes  the 
soul  grow  sick  and  faint.  They  spend  hundreds  of  dollars  for  a 
pair  of  shoes,  a  handkerchief,  a  garter;  they  spend  millions  for 
horses  and  automobiles  and  yachts,  for  palaces  and  banquets, 
for  little  shiny  stones  with  which  to  deck  their  bodies.  Their 
life  is  a  contest  among  themselves  for  supremacy  in  ostentation 
and  recklessness,  in  the  destroying  of  useful  and  necessary 
things,  in  the  wasting  of  the  labor  and  the  lives  of  their  fellow- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  197 

creatures,  the  toil  and  anguish  of  the  nations,  the  sweat  and 
tears  and  blood  of  the  human  race!  It  is  all  theirs — it  comes  to 
them;  just  as  all  the  springs  pour  into  streamlets,  and  the 
streamlets  into  rivers,  and  the  rivers  into  the  ocean — so,  auto 
matically  and  inevitably,  all  the  wealth  of  society  comes  to  them. 
The  farmer  tills  the  soil,  the  miner  digs  in  the  earth,  the  weaver 
tends  the  loom,  the  mason  carves  the  stone;  the  clever  man  in 
vents,  the  shrewd  man  directs,  the  wise  man  studies,  the  inspired 
man  sings — and  all  the  results,  the  products  of  the  labor  of 
brain  and  muscle,  are  gathered  into  one  stupendous  stream  and 
poured  into  their  laps! 

This  is  the  system.  It  is  the  crown  and  culmination 
of  all  the  wrongs  of  the  ages ;  and  in  proportion  to  the 
magnitude  of  its  exploitation,  is  the  hypocrisy  and 
knavery  of  the  clerical  camouflage  which  has  been  or 
ganized  in  its  behalf.  Beyond  all  question,  the  supreme 
irony  of  history  is  the  use  which  has  been  made  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  the  Head  God  of  this  blood-thirsty 
system ;  it  is  a  cruelty  beyond  all  language,  a  blasphemy 
beyond  the  power  of  art  to  express.  Read  the  man's 
words,  furious  as  those  of  any  modern  agitator  that  I 
have  heard  in  twenty  years  of  revolutionary  experi 
ence:  "Lay  not  up  for  yourselves  treasures  on  earth! 
— Sell  that  ye  have  and  give  alms! — Blessed  are  ye 
poor,  for  yours  is  the  kingdom  of  Heaven ! — Woe  unto 
you  that  are  rich,  for  ye  have  received  your  consola 
tion! — Verily,  I  say  unto  you,  that  a  rich  man  shall 
hardly  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  Heaven! — Woe  unto 
you  also,  you  lawyers ! — Ye  serpents,  ye  generation  of 
vipers,  how  can  ye  escape  the  damnation  of  hell  ?" 

"And  this  man" — I  quote  from  "The  Jungle"  again 
— "they  have  made  into  the  high-priest  of  property  and 
smug  respectability,  a  divine  sanction  of  all  the  horrors 
and  abominations  of  modern  commercial  civilization! 


198  THE  PKOFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Jewelled  images  are  made  of  him,  sensual  priests  burn 
insense  to  him,  and  modern  pirates  of  industry  bring 
their  dollars,  wrung  from  the  toil  of  helpless  women 
and  children,  and  build  temples  to  him,  and  sit  in  cush 
ioned  seats  and  listen  to  his  teachings  expounded  by 
doctors  of  dusty  divinity!" 


BOOK  FIVE 

The  Church  of  the  Merchants 

Mammon  led  them  on — 
Mammon,  the  least  erected  spirit  that  fell 
From   Heaven;   for  even   in   Heaven   his   looks   and 

thoughts 

Were  always  downward  bent,  admiring  more 
The  riches  of  Heaven's  pavement,  trodden  gold, 
Than  aught  divine  or  holy  else  enjoyed 
In  vision  beatific ....  Let  none  admire 
llhat  riches  grow  in  Hell ;  that  soil  may  best 
[Deserve  the  precious  bane. 

Milton* 


190 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  201 

The  Head  Merchant 

Ours  is  the  era  of  commerce,  as  its  propagandists 
never  weary  of  telling  us.  Business  is  the  basis  of  our 
material  lives,  and  consequently  of  our  culture.  Busi 
ness  men  control  our  politics  and  dictate  our  laws ;  busi 
ness  men  own  our  newspapers  and  direct  their  policy; 
business  men  sit  on  our  school  boards,  and  endow  and 
manage  our  universities.  The  Reformation  was  a  re 
volt  of  the  newly-developing  merchant  classes  against 
the  tyrannies  and  abuses  of  feudal  clericalism:  so  in 
all  Protestant  Christianity  one  finds  the  spirit,  ideals, 
and  language  of  Trade.  We  have  shown  how  the  sym 
bolism  of  the  Anglican  Church  is  of  the  palace  and  the 
throne;  in  the  same  way  that  of  the  non-conformist 
sects  may  be  shown  to  be  of  the  counting-house.  In  tko 
view  of  the  middle-class  Britisher,  the  nexus  between 
man  and  man  is  cent  per  cent ;  and  so  in  their  Sunday 
services  the  worshippers  sing  such  hymns  as  this : 

Whatever,  Lord,  we  lend  to  Thee, 
Repaid  a  thousand  fold  shall  be; 
Then  gladly  will  we  give  to  Thee, 
Who  givest  all. 

The  first  duty  of  every  man  under  the  competitive 
system  is  to  secure  the  survival  of  his  own  business; 
so  on  the  Sabbath,  when  he  comes  to  deal  with  eter 
nity,  he  is  practical  and  explicit: 

Nothing  is  worth  a  thought  beneath 
But  how  I  may  escape  the  death 

That  never,  never  dies; 
How  make  mine  own  election  sure, 
And  when  I  fail  on  earth  secure 

A  mansion  in  the  skies. 


202  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Just  as  the  priest  of  the  aristocratic  caste  figures 
God  as  a  mighty  Conqueror — 

Marching  as  to  war 
With  the  cross  of  Jesus 

Going  on  before — 

so  the  preacher  to  the  trader  figures  the  divinity  as  a 
glorified  Merchant  keeping  books.  This  Head  Merchant 
has  a  monopoly  in  His  line;  He  knows  all  His  rivals' 
secrets,  so  there  is  no  getting  ahead  of  Him,  and  noth 
ing  to  do  but  obey  His  Word,  as  revealed  through  His 
clerical  staff.  The  system  is  oily  with  protestations  of 
divine  love ;  but  when  you  read  the  comments  of  Luther 
upon  Calvin  and  of  Calvin  upon  Luther,  you  understand 
that  this  love  is  confined  to  the  inside  of  each  denomina 
tion.  And  even  so  restricted,  there  is  not  always  enough 
to  go  around.  Recently  I  met  a  Presbyterian  clergy 
man,  to  whom  I  remarked,  "I  see  by  the  papers  that  you 
have  just  finished  a  church  building."  "Yes,"  he  an 
swered  ;  "and  I  have  had  three  offers  of  a  new  church." 
I  did  not  see  the  connection,  and  asked,  "Because  you 
were  so  successful  with  this  one?"  The  reply  was, 
"They  always  take  it  for  granted  that  you  want  to 
change  when  you've  finished  a  new  building,  because 
you  make  so  many  enemies !" 

The  business  man  puts  up  the  money  to  build  the 
church,  he  puts  up  the  money  to  keep  it  going ;  and  the 
first  rule  of  a  business  man  is  that  when  he  puts  up  the 
money  for  a  thing  he  "runs"  that  thing.  Of  course  he 
sees  that  it  spreads  his  own  views  of  life,  it  helps  to 
maintain  his  tradition.  In  the  days  of  Anu  and  Baal  we 
heard  the  proclamation  of  the  divine  right  of  Kings; 
in  these  days  of  Mammon  we  hear  the  proclamation  of 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  203 

the  divine  right  of  Merchants.  Some  fifteen  years  ago 
the  head  of  our  Coal  Trust  announced  during  a  great 
strike  that  the  question  would  be  settled  "by  the  Chris 
tian  men  to  whom  God  in  His  Infinite  Wisdom  has  given 
control  of  the  property  interests  of  this  country".  And 
on  that  declaration  all  pious  merchants  stand;  what 
ever  their  denominations,  Catholic,  Episcopalian,  Bap 
tist,  Methodist,  Presbyterian  or  Hebrew,  their  Sab 
bath  doctrines  are  alike,  as  their  week-day  practices 
are  alike;  whether  it  is  Rockefeller  shooting  his  Bay- 
onne  oil-workers  and  burning  alive  the  little  children 
of  his  miners;  or  smooth  John  Wanamaker,  paying 
starvation  wages  to  department-store  girls  and  driving 
them  to  the  streets ;  or  that  clergyman  who,  at  a  gath 
ering  of  society  ladies,  members  of  the  "Law  and  Order 
League"  of  Denver,  declared  in  my  hearing  that  if  he 
could  have  his  way  he  would  blow  up  the  home  of  every 
coal-striker  with  dynamite ;  or  the  Rev.  R.  A.  Torrey, 
Dean  of  the  Bible  institute  of  Los  Angeles,  who  re 
fused  to  employ  union  labor  on  the  million  dollar  build 
ing  of  the  Institute,  declaring  that  "the  Church  cannot 
afford  to  have  any  dealings  with  a  band  of  fire-bugs 
and  murderers !" 

"Herr  Beeble" 

The  business  of  the  Clerical  Department  of  the 
Merchants'  and  Manufacturers'  Association  is  to  justi 
fy  the  processes  of  trade,  and  to  preach  to  clerks  and 
employees  the  slave-virtues  of  frugality,  humility,  and 
loyalty  to  the  profit  system.  The  depths  of  sociological 
depravity  to  which  some  of  the  agents  of  this  Associa 
tion  have  sunk  is  difficult  of  belief.  Twelve  years  ago 
I  was  invited  to  address  the  book-sellers  of  New  York, 


204  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

in  company  with  a  well-known  clergyman  of  the  city, 
the  Reverend  Madison  C.  Peters.  This  gentleman's  ad 
dress  made  such  an  impression  upon  me  that  I  recall 
it  even  at  this  distance :  a  string  of  jokes  spoken  with 
an  effect  of  rapid-fire  smartness,  and  simply  reeking 
with  commercialism.  I  could  not  describe  it  better  than 
to  say  that  it  was  on  the  ethical  level  of  the  "Letters  of 
a  Self-Made  Merchant  to  His  Son".  Again,  I  attended 
a  debate  on  Socialism,  in  which  the  capitalist  end  was 
taken  by  another  famous  clergyman,  pastor  of  the  Met 
ropolitan  Temple,  the  Rev.  J.  Wesley  Hill.  He  was  so 
ignorant  that  when  he  wished  to  prove  that  Socialism 
means  free  love,  he  quoted  a  writer  by  the  name  ot 
"Herr  Beeble" ;  he  was  so  dishonest  that  he  garbled  the 
writings  of  this  "Herr  Beeble",  making  him  say  some 
thing  quite  different  from  what  he  had  meant  to  say.  I 
could  name  several  clergymen  of  various  denominations 
who  have  stooped  to  that  device  against  the  Socialists ; 
including  the  Catholic  Father  Belford,  who  says  that 
we  are  mad  dogs  and  should  be  stopped  with  bullets. 

Or  consider  the  Reverend  Thomas  Dixon.  This 
gentleman's  pulpit-slang  used  to  be  the  talk  of  New 
York  when  I  was  a  boy ;  and  when  I  grew  up,  and  came 
into  the  Socialist  movement — behold,  here  he  was,  chief 
inquisitor  of  the  capitalist  Holy  Office.  I  had  a  friend,  a 
man  who  saved  my  life  at  a  time  when  I  was  practically 
starving,  and  to  whom  therefore  I  owe  my  survival  as 
a  writer ;  this  friend  had  been  a  clergyman  in  a  Middle 
Western  state,  and  had  preached  Jesus  as  he  really 
was,  and  so  was  hated  and  feared  like  Jesus.  It  hap 
pened  that  he  was  unhappily  married,  and  permitted 
his  wife  to  divorce  him  so  that  he  might  marry  the 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  205 

woman  he  loved;  for  which  unheard  of  crime  the  or 
ganized  hypocrisy  of  America  fell  upon  him  like  a 
thousand  devils  with  poisoned  whips.  The  Reverend 
Dixon's  holy  rage  was  fired ;  he  applied  his  imagination 
to  my  friend's  story,  producing  a  novel  under  the  title 
of  "The  One  Woman" ;  and  it  is  as  if  you  were  reading 
the  story  of  Jesus  and  the  Magdalen  transmitted 
through  the  personality  of  a  he-goat.  Of  late  years  this 
clerical  author  has  turned  his  energies  to  negrophobia 
and  militarism,  making  millions  out  of  motion-picture 
incitements  to  hatred  and  terror.  The  pictures  were 
made  here  in  Southern  California,  and  friends  in  the 
business  have  described  to  me  the  pious  propagandist 
in  the  position  of  St.  Anthony  surrounded  by  swarms 
of  cute  and  playful  little  movie-girls. 

Or  take  the  Rev.  James  Roscoe  Day,  D.  D.,  S.  T.  D., 
LL.  D.,  D.  C.  L.,  L.  H.  D.,  a  leading  light  of  the  Meth 
odist  Episcopal  Church,  who  offers  himself  as  comic 
relief  in  our  Clerical  Vaudeville.  Dr.  Day  is  Chancellor 
of  Syracuse  University,  a  branch  of  the  Mental  Muni 
tions  Department  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company;  his 
function  being  to  manufacture  intellectual  weapons  and 
explosives  to  be  used  in  defense  of  the  Rockefeller  for 
tune.  It  is  generally  not  expected  that  the  makers  of 
ruling-class  munitions  should  face  the  dirty  and  peril 
ous  work  of  the  trenches ;  but  ten  years  ago,  during  a 
raid  by  an  active  squad  of  muckrake-men,  Chancellor 
Day  astonished  the  world  by  rushing  to  the  front  with 
both  arms  full  of  star-shells  and  bombs.  He  afterwards 
put  the  history  of  this  gallant  action  into  a  volume, 
"The  Raid  on  Prosperity";  and  if  you  want  the  real 
thrill  of  the  class-war,  here  is  where  to  get  it ! 


206  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

The  Chancellor  is  a  quaint  and  touching  figure ;  an 
enthusiast  and  dreamer,  idealist  and  martyr,  in  whom 
the  ordinary  human  virtues  have  been  fused,  absorbed, 
transformed  and  sublimated  into  a  new  supreme  vir 
tue  of  loyalty  to  Exploitation,  patriotism  for  Profi 
teering.  He  began  life  as  a  working-man,  he  tells  us,  in 
the  good  old  American  fashion  of  hustle  for  yourself; 
but  he  differed  from  other  Americans  in  that  he  had 
an  instant,  intuitive  recognition  of  the  intellectual  and 
moral  excellence  of  Plutocracy.  The  first  time  he  met  a 
rich  man,  he  quivered  with  rapture,  he  burst  into  a 
hymn  of  appreciation.  So  very  quickly  he  was  recog 
nized  as  a  proper  person  to  have  charge  of  a  Mental 
Munition  Works;  and  the  ruling  classes  proceeded  to 
pin  medals  upon  the  bosom  of  his  academic  robes — 
D.  D.,  S.  T.  D.,  L.  L.  D.,  D.  C.  L,  L.  H.  D. 

The  Chancellor  knows  the  masters  of  our  Profit 
System,  those  "consummate  geniuses  of  manufacture 
and  trade  by  which  the  earth  has  yielded  up  her  infinite 
treasures."  And  having  been  at  the  same  time  in  inti 
mate  daily  communion  with  the  Almighty,  he  can  tell 
us  the  Almighty's  attitude  towards  these  prodigies. 
"God  has  made  the  rich  of  this  world  to  serve  Him. . . . 
He  has  shown  them  a  way  to  have  this  world's  goods 
and  to  be  rich  towards  God ....  God  wants  the  rich  men 
....  Christ's  doctrines  have  made  the  world  rich,  and 
provide  adequate  uses  for  its  riches."  Also  the  Chancel 
lor  knows  our  great  corporations,  and  gives  us  the  Al 
mighty's  views  about  them ;  they  mean  that  "the  forces 
with  which  God  built  the  universe  have  been  put  into 
the  hands  of  man."  Likewise  by  divine  authority  we 
learn  that  "the  sympathy  given  to  Socialism  is  ap- 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  207 

palling.  It  is  insanity."  We  learn  that  the  income  tax 
is  "a  doctrine  suited  to  the  dark  ages,  only  no  age  ever 
has  been  dark  enough."  Somebody  raises  the  issue  of 
"tainted  money",  and  the  Chancellor  disposes  of  this 
matter  also.  As  a  Deputy  of  Divinity,  he  settles  it  by 
Holy  Writ :  "Paul  permitted  meat  offered  to  idols  to  be 
eaten  in  the  fear  of  God."  And  then,  to  make  assurance 
doubly  sure,  he  settles  it  with  plain  human  logic;  and 
you  are  astonished  to  see  how  simple,  under  his  handl 
ing,  the  complex  problem  becomes — how  clear  and 
clean-cut  is  the  distinction  he  draws  for  you : 

Every  boy  knows  that  one  cannot  take  stolen  goods  without 
being  a  partaker  with  the  thief.  But  the  proceeds  of  recognized 
business  are  quite  a  different  thing. 

Holy  Oil 

And  here  is  Billy  Sunday,  most  conspicuous  phe 
nomenon  of  Protestant  Christianity  at  the  beginning 
of  the  twentieth  century.  For  the  benefit  of  posterity 
I  explain  that  "Billy"  is  a  baseball  player  turned  Evan 
gelist,  who  has  brought  to  the  cause  of  God  the  crowds 
and  uproar  of  the  diamond ;  also  the  commercial  spirit 
of  America's  most  popular  institution.  He  travels  like 
a  circus,  with  all  the  press-agent  work  and  newspaper 
hurrah;  he  conducts  what  are  called  "revivals",  in  an 
enormous  "tabernacle"  built  especially  for  him  in  each 
city.  I  cannot  better  describe  the  Billy  Sunday  circus 
than  in  the  words  of  a  certain  Sidney  C.  Tapp,  who 
brought  suit  against  the  evangelist  for  $100,000  dam 
ages  for  the  theft  of  the  ideas  of  a  book.  Says  Mr.  Tapp 
in  his  complaint : 

The  so-called  religious  awakening  or  "trail-hitting"  is  pro 
duced  by  an  appeal  to  the  emotions  and  in  stirring  up  the  senses 


208  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

by  a  combination  of  carrying  the  United  States  flag  in  one  hand 
and  the  Bible  in  the  other,  singing,  trumpeting,  organ  playing, 
garrulous  and  acrobatic  feats  of  defendant,  by  defendant  in  his 
talk  leaping  from  the  rostrum  to  the  top  of  the  pulpit,  lying 
prone  on  the  floor  of  the  rostrum  on  his  stomach  in  the  presence 
of  the  vast  audience  and  from  thence  into  a  pit  to  shake  hands 
with  the  so-called  "trail-hitters"  and  the  vulgar  use  of  plaintiff's 
thoughts  contained  in  said  books.  Said  harangues  and  vulgar 
isms  of  said  defendant  and  horns,  drums,  organs  and  singing  by 
said  choir  and  vast  audience  which  are  assembled  by  means  of 
said  newspaper  advertisements  for  the  purpose  of  inducing  a 
habit  of  free  and  copious  flow  of  money  through  religious  and 
patriotic  excitement  produced  by  and  through  the  vulgarisms, 
scurrility,  buffoonery,  obscenity  and  profanity  of  defendant  pre 
tending  to  be  in  the  interest  of  the  cause  of  religion  through 
what  he  denominates  "hitting  the  trail",  the  real  object  being  to 
induce  a  religious  frenzy  and  enthusiasm  which  he  announces  in 
advance  is  to  result  in  large  audiences  composed  of  thousands  of 
people  generously  contributing  vast  sums  of  money  on  the  last 
day  and  night  of  the  so-called  revival  which  is  invariably  ap 
propriated  by  the  defendant  and  through  which  scheme  and  de 
vice  defendant  has  become  enormously  wealthy. 

As  I  write,  the  evangelist  is  in  Los  Angeles,  and 
twice  each  day  he  holds  forth  to  a  crowd  of  ten  or  fif 
teen  thousand ;  in  addition  the  newspapers  print  literal 
ly  pages  of  his  utterances.  The  entire  Protestant  clergy 
for  a  score  of  miles  around  has  been  hitched  to  his  tri 
umphal  chariot,  and  driven  captive  through  the  streets. 
Here  in  this  dignified  city  of  Pasadena,  home  of  mil 
lionaire  brewers  and  chewing-gum  kings,  all  the 
churches  have  been  plastered  for  weeks  with  cloth 
signs:  "This  Church  is  Cooperating  in  the  Sunday 
Campaign."  To  give  a  sample  of  the  intellectual  level 
of  the  performance,  here  is  what  Billy  has  to  say  about 
modern  thought : 

All  this  blasphemy  against  God  and  Jesus  Christ,  all  this 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  209 

sneering,  highbrow,  rotten,  loathesome,  higher  criticism,  wrig 
gling  its  dirty,  filthy,  stinking  carcass  out  of  a  beer-mug  in 
Leipzig  or  Heidelberg! 

Whether  willingly  or  reluctantly,  the  preachers  sit 
upon  the  platform  and  smile  while  Billy  thus  slangs  the 
devil ;  and  being  themselves,  poor  fellows,  at  their  wits 
end  to  draw  the  crowd,  they  watch  and  see  how  ne  does 
it,  and  then  return  to  their  own  churches  and  try  the 
same  stunt;  so  the  manners  of  the  baseball  diamond 
spread  like  a  contagion.  I  open  my  morning  paper,  and 
find  a  picture  of  an  intense-looking  clerical  gentleman, 
the  Rev.  J.  Whitcomb  Brougher,  pastor  of  the  Baptist 
Temple.  He  is  discussing  certain  slanderous  rumors 
which  he  has  heard  about  Billy  Sunday,  and  he  offers 
ten  thousand  dollars  reward  to  anyone  who  can  prove 
these  things ;  though,  as  he  says, 

The  dirty,  low-down,  contemptible,  weazen-brained,  impure- 
hearted,  shrivelled-souled,  gossipping  devils  do  not  deserve  to 
be  noticed Scandal-mongers,  gossip-lovers,  reputation-de 
stroyers,  hypocritical,  black-hearted,  green-eyed  slanderers 

Corrupt,  devil-possessed,  vile  debauches Immoral,  sin-loving, 

vice-practicing,  underhanded  sneaks Carrion-loving  buzzards 

and  foul-smelling  skunks. 

You  will  be  prepared  after  this  to  hear  that  when 
the  Socialists  were  near  to  carrying  Los  Angeles,  this 
clergyman  preached  a  sermon  in  support  of  the  candi 
date  of  "Booze,  Gas  and  Railroads". 

In  so  far  as  Billy  Sunday  is  trying  to  keep  the  neg 
lected  youth  of  our  streets  from  drinking,  gambling  and 
whoring,  no  one  could  wish  him  anything  but  success ; 
but  his  besotted  ignorance,  his  childish  crudity  of 
mind,  make  it  impossible  that  he  could  have  any  success 

except  of  a  delusive  nature.  He  is  utterly  devoid  of  a 
a 


210  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

social  sense;  utterly  unaware  of  the  existence  of  the 
forces  of  capitalism  which  are  causing  depravity  ten 
times  as  fast  as  all  the  evangelists  in  creation  can  rem 
edy  it.  So  he  is  precisely  like  the  Catholics  /ith  their 
"charity",  cleaning  up  loathsome  and  unsightly  messes 
for  a  thousand  years,  and  never  stopping  to  ask  why 
such  messes  continue  to  come  into  existence. 

More  than  that,  I  question  whether  the  spirit  of 
commercialism  which  he  fosters  does  not  help  the  de 
velopment  of  evil  more  than  his  preaching  hinders  it. 
The  newspapers  always  report  the  cost  of  the  taber 
nacle,  r  ..  of  the  "free-will  offering",  which  amounts  to 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  in  each  "campaign'' 
In  each  ci'/  the  expenses  are  guaranteed  by  men  who 
are  generally  the  most  sinister  exploiting  forces  of  the 
community;  they  welcome  and  fete  him,  and  he  visits 
their  homes,  and  is  in  every  way  one  of  the  crowd. 
After  the  big  si,  strike  in  Paterson,  N.  J.,  the  employ 
ers,  Jews  and  Catholics  included,  all  subscribed  a  fund 
to  bring  Billy  Sunday  to  that  city;  and  it  was  freely 
proclaimed  that  the  purpose  was  to  undermine  the  rad 
ical  union  movement.  This  was  never  denied  by  Sunday 
himself,  and  his  whole  campaign  was  conducted  on  that 
basis. 

Later  Billy  came  to  New  York,  where  he  met  a  cer 
tain  rich  young  man,  perhaps  a  thousand  times  as  ricl 
as  any  that  lived  in  Palestine.  This  young  man  came 
to  Billy  and  said :  "What  shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal 
life  ?"  And  Billy  told  him  to  keep  the  commandments — 
"Do  not  commit  adultery,  Do  not  kill,  Do  not  steal,  Do 
not  bear  false  witness,  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  moth 
er."  The  young  man  answered ;  "All  these  have  I  kept 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  211 

from  my  youth  up."  And  Billy  said :  "Yet  lackest  thou 
one  thing;  sell  all  that  thou  hast  and  distribute  unto 
the  poor,  and  thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  heaven ;  and 
come  follow  me."  And  when  he  heard  this  he  was  very 
sorrowful,  for  he  was  very  rich. 

— No,  I  have  got  the  story  mixed  up.  That  is  what 
happened  in  Palestine.  What  happened  in  New  York  is 
that  Billy  said,  "I  am  delighted  to  meet  you,  Mr.  Kocke- 
feller."  And  Mr.  Rockefeller  said,  "Come  be  my  guest 
at  my  palace  in  the  Pocantico  Hills ;  and  then  we  will 
go  together  and  you  may  preach  submission  to  my 
wage-slaves  in  the  oil-factories  at  Bayonne  and  else 
where."  And  Billy  went  to  the  palace,  and  went  and 
preached  to  the  wage-slaves,  telling  them  to  beware  the 
'stinking  Socialists",  and  to  concentrate  their  atten 
tion  on  the  saving  of  their  souls ;  so  the  rich  young  man 
was  delighted,  and  he  sent  for  all  the  newspaper  re 
porters  to  come  to  his  office  at  26  Broadway,  and  told 
them  what  a  great  and  useful  man  Billy  Sunday  is.  As 
the  New  York  "Times"  tells  about  it: 

Mr.  Rockefeller  seldom  gives  interviews  and  certainly  he  has 
never  been  charged  with  having  an  excess  of  verbally  expressed 
enthusiasm  on  any  subject.  But  he  talked  for  an  hour  and  a  half 
about  the  evangelist.  He  was  full  of  the  subject  of  Billy  Sunday. 
"Billy  did  New  York  a  lot  of  good,"  he  said.  He  went  on  to  tell 
of  187  meetings  held  in  100  different  factories,  attended  by  50,000 
men.  "That's  good  work."  And  he  expressed  his  satisfaction  with 
Sunday's  theology:  "He  believes  the  Bible  from  cover  to  cover 
and  that  is  good  enough  for  me."  The  Sunday  campaign  had  cost 
$200,000,  and  "If  it  had  stopped  here,  if  it  was  not  kept  up,  it 
would  be  poor  business;  a  poor  dividend  on  the  $200,000  and  the 
work  invested.  But  we  expect  to  get  dividends  in  the  next  year." 

Again  you  note  the  symbolism  of  the  counting- 
house  ! 


212  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Rhetorical  Black-hanging 

It  is  the  duty  of  the  clergy,  not  merely  to  defend 
large-scale  merchants  while  they  live,  but  to  bury  them 
when  they  die,  and  to  place  the  seal  of  sanctity  upon 
their  careers.  Concerning  this  aspect  of  Bootstrap- 
lifting  I  quote  the  opinion  of  an  earnest  hater  of  shams, 
William  Makepeace  Thackeray : 

I  think  the  part  which  pulpits  play  in  the  death  of  kings 
is  the  most  ghastly  of  all  the  ceremonial:  the  lying  eulogies,  the 
blinking  of  disagreeable  truths,  the  sickening  flatteries,  the  sim 
ulated  grief,  the  falsehood  and  sycophancies — all  uttered  in  the 
name  of  Heaven  in  our  State  churches:  these  monstrous  Thren 
odies  which  have  been  sung  from  time  immemorial  over  kings 
and  queens,  good,  bad,  wicked,  licentious.  The  State  parson  must 
bring  out  his  commonplaces;  his  apparatus  of  rhetorical  black- 
hanging 

And  this,  of  course,  applies  not  merely  to  kings  of 
England,  but  to  kings  of  Steel,  kings  of  Coal,  kings  of 
Oil,  kings  of  Wall  Street.  Leland  Stanford,  son  of  a 
great  king  of  Western  railroads,  died ;  and  standing  over 
his  coffin,  a  Methodist  clergyman,  afterwards  Bishop, 
preached  a  sermon  of  fulsome  flattery,  wherein  he  lik 
ened  young  Leland  to  the  boy  Christ.  In  the  year  1904 
there  passed  from  his  earthly  reward  in  Pennsylvania 
a  United  States  senator  who  had  been  throughout  his 
lifetime  a  notorious  and  unblushing  corruptionist.  Mat 
thew  Stanley  Quay  was  his  name,  and  the  New  York 
"Nation",  having  no  clerical  connections,  was  free  to 
state  the  facts  about  him : 

He  bought  the  organization,  bribed  or  intimidated  the  press, 
got  his  grip  on  the  public  service,  including  even  the  courts;  im 
posed  his  will  on  Congress  and  Cabinet,  and  upon  the  last  three 
Presidents — making  the  latter  provide  for  the  offal  of  his  po 
litical  machine,  which  even  Pennsylvania  could  no  longer  stom- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  213 

ach — and  all  without  identifying  his  name  with  a  single  mea 
sure  of  public  good,  without  making  a  speech  or  uttering  a  party 
watchword,  without  even  pretending  to  be  honest,  but  solely  be 
cause,  like  Judas,  he  carried  the  bag  and  could  buy  whom  he 
would. 

Such  was  the  lay  opinion ;  and  now  for  the  clerical. 
It  was  expressed  by  a  Presbyterian  divine,  the  Rev 
erend  Dr.  J.  S.  Ramsey,  who  stood  over  the  coffin  of 
"Matt",  and  without  cracking  a  smile  declared  that  he 
had  been  "a  statesman  who  was  always  on  the  right 
side  of  every  moral  question !" 

In  that  same  year  of  1904  died  the  high  priest  of 
our  political  corruption,  Mark  Hanna.  He  had  belonged 
to  no  church,  but  had  backed  them  all,  understanding 
the  main  thesis  of  this  book  as  clearly  as  the  writer  of 
it.  In  his  home  city  of  Cleveland  the  eulogy  upon  him 
was  pronounced  by  Bishop  Leonard,  in  St.  Paul's  Epis 
copal  Church;  while  in  the  United  States  Senate  the 
service  was  performed  by  the  Chaplain,  the  Rev.  Ed 
ward  Everett  Hale.  This  is  a  name  well-known  in  Amer 
ican  letters,  as  in  American  religious  life ;  it  was  borne 
by  a  benevolent  old  gentleman,  a  Unitarian  and  a  lib 
eral,  who  organized  "Lend-a-Hand  Clubs"  and  such 
like  amiabilities.  "Do  You  Love  This  Old  Man?"  the 
signs  in  the  street-cars  used  to  ask  when  I  was  a  boy ; 
and  I  promptly  answered  "Yes" — for  my  mother  took 
the  "Ladies'  Home  Journal",  and  I  swallowed  the  senti 
mental  dish-water  set  out  for  me.  But  when  I  read  the 
Rev.  Edward's  funeral  oration  over  the  Irrev.  Mark,  I 
loved  neither  of  them  any  longer.  "This  whole-souled 
child  of  God,"  cried  the  Rev.  Edward,  "who  believed  in 
success,  and  knew  how  to  succeed  by  using  the  infinite 
powers!"  You  perceive  that  the  Chaplain  of  the  Mil- 


214  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

lionaires'  Club  agrees  with  this  book,  that  the  "infinite 
powers"  in  America  are  the  powers  that  prey! 

The  Great  American  Fraud 

Among  the  most  loathesome  products  of  our  native 
commercial  greed  is  the  patent  medicine  industry,  "The 
Great  American  Fraud,"  as  its  historian  has  called  it. 
In  1907  this  historian  wrote : 

Gullible  America  will  spend  this  year  some  seventy-five  mil 
lions  of  dollars  in  the  purchase  of  patent  medicines.  In  consid 
eration  of  this  sum  it  will  swallow  huge  quantities  of  alcohol,  an 
appalling  amount  of  opiates  and  narcotics,  a  wide  assortment  of 
varied  drugs  ranging  from  powerful  and  dangerous  heart  de 
pressants  to  insidious  liver  stimulants;  and,  far  in  excess  of  all 
other  ingredients,  undiluted  fraud.  For  fraud,  exploited  by  the 
skillfullest  of  advertising  bunco  men,  is  the  basis  of  the  trade. 

One  by  one  Mr.  Adams  tells  about  these  medical 
fakes :  habit-forming  laxatives,  head-ache  powders  full 
of  acetanilid,  soothing-syrups  and  catarrh-cures  full  of 
opium  and  cocaine,  cock-tails  subtly  disguised  as  "bit 
ters",  "sarsaparillas",  and  "tonics".  He  shows  how  the 
fake  testimonials  are  made  up  and  exploited ;  how  the 
confidential  letters,  telling  the  secret  troubles  of  men 
and  women,  are  collected  by  tens  and  hundreds  of  thou 
sands  and  advertised  and  sold — so  that  the  victim,  as 
he  begins  to  lose  faith  in  one  fake,  finds  another  at  hand, 
fully  informed  as  to  his  weakness.  He  quotes  the  amaz 
ing  "Red  Clause"  in  the  contracts  which  the  patent- 
medicine  makers  have  with  thousands  of  daily  and 
weekly  papers,  whereby  the  makers  are  able  to  control 
the  press  of  the  country  and  prevent  legislation  against 
the  "Great  American  Fraud." 

There  are  a  thousand  religious  papers  in  America, 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  215 

weekly  and  monthly ;  and  what  is  their  attitude  on  this 
question?  Mr.  Adams  tells  us: 

Whether  because  church-going  people  are  more  trusting,  and 
therefore  more  easily  befooled  than  others,  or  from  some  more 
obscure  reason,  many  of  the  religious  papers  fairly  reek  with 
patent  medicine  fakes. 

He  gives  us  many  pages  of  specific  instances : 

Dr.  Smith  belongs  to  the  brood  of  cancer  vampires.  He  is 
a  patron  and  prop  of  religious  journalism.  It  is  his  theory  that 
the  easiest  prey  is  to  be  found  among  readers  of  church  papers. 
Moreover  he  has  learned  from  his  father-in-law  (who  built  a 
small  church  out  of  blood-money)  to  capitalize  his  own  sectarian 
associations,  and  when  confronted  recently  with  a  formal  accu 
sation  he  replied,  with  an  air  of  injured  innocence,  that  he  was 
a  regular  attendant  at  church,  and  could  produce  an  endorsement 
from  his  minister. 

And  here  is  the  "Church  Advocate",  of  Harrisburg, 
Pa.,  which  publishes  quack  advertisements  disguised  as 
editorials.  One  of  them  Mr.  Adams  paraphrases : 

As  Dr.  Smith  is,  on  the  face  of  his  own  statements,  a  self- 
branded  swindler  and  rascal,  you  run  no  risk  in  assuming  that 
the  Rev.  C.  H.  Forney,  D.  D.,  L.  L.  D.,  in  acting  as  his  journalistic 
supporter  for  pay,  is  just  such  another  as  himself! 

And  again: 

Will  the  editor  of  the  "Baptist  Watchman"  of  Boston  explain 
by  what  phenomenon  of  logic  or  elasticity  of  ethics  he  accepts  the 
lucubrations  of  Dr.  Bye,  of  Oren  Oneal,  of  Liquozone,  of  Actina, 
that  marvelous  two-ended  mechanical  appliance  which  "cures" 
deafness  at  one  terminus  and  blindness  at  the  other,  and  all 
with  a  little  oil  of  mustard  ? 

And  again : 

The  "Christian  Observer"  of  Louisville  replied  to  a  protest 
ing  subscriber,  suggesting  that  the  "Collier"  articles  were  writ 
ten  in  a  spirit  of  revenge,  because  "Collier's"  could  not  get  pat- 


216  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

ent  medicine  advertising.  When  I  asked  the  Rev.  F.  Bartlett 
Converse  for  his  foundation  for  the  charge,  he  said  that  one 
of  the  typewriters  must  have  written  the  letter!  Doubtless  also 
the  same  highly  responsible  typewriter  imitated  the  signature 
with  startling  fidelity  to  Dr.  Converse's  handwriting! 

And  here  is — would  you  think  it  possible? — our 
"Church  of  Good  Society" !  It  has  an  organ  in  Chicago 
called  the  "Living  Church",  most  dignified  and  decor 
ous.  You  have  to  study  quite  a  while  to  ascertain  what 
denomination  it  belongs  to ;  it  will  not  tell  you  directly, 
for  the  Anglician  pose  is  that  it  is  the  church 

Elect  from  every  nation, 

Yet  one  o'er  all  the  earth, 
Her  charter  of  salvation, 

One  Lord,  one  Faith,  one  Birth; 
One  holy  name  she  blesses, 

Partakes  one  holy  food, 
And  toward  one  Hope  she  presses, 

With  every  grace  endued. 

And  this  one  holy  institution  was  found  setting  at  its 
peak  the  black  flag  of  the  trader,  the  "Jolly  Roger"  of 
the  modern  commercial  pirate — "Caveat  emptor!"  To 
quote  the  precise  words : 

The  editors  and  publishers  of  the  "Living  Church"  assume 
no  responsibility  for  the  assertions  of  advertisers. 

And  so  it  threw  open  its  columns  to  the  claims  of 
America's  champion  labor-baiter,  the  late  C.  W.  Post, 
that  his  "Grapenuts"  would  prevent  appendicitis,  and 
obviate  the  need  of  operations  in  such  cases ! 

And  here  is  the  "Christian  Endeavor  World",  organ 
of  one  of  the  most  powerful  non-sectarian  religious 
bodies  in  the  country.  Some  one  wrote  complaining  of 
its  medical  advertising,  and  the  answer  was : 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  217 

To  the  best  of  our  knowledge  and  belief,  we  are  not  pub 
lishing  any  fraudulent  or  unworthy  medical  advertising 

Trusting  that  you  will  be  able  to  understand  that  we  are  acting 
according  to  our  best  and  sincerest  judgment,  I  remain,  yours 
very  truly,  The  Golden  Rule  Company,  George  W.  Coleman, 
Business  Manager. 

Whereupon  the  historian  of  "The  Great  American 
Fraud"  remarks: 

Assuming  that  the  business  management  of  the  "Christian 
Endeavor  World"  represents  normal  intelligence,  I  would  like 
to  ask  whether  it  accepts  the  statement  that  a  pair  of  "magic 
foot  drafts"  applied  to  the  soles  of  the  feet  will  cure  any  and 
every  kind  of  rheumatism  in  any  part  of  the  body?  Further,  if 
the  advertising  department  is  genuinely  interested  in  declining 
"fraudulent  and  unworthy"  copy,  I  would  call  their  attention  to 
the  ridiculous  claims  of  Dr.  Snoop's  medicines,  which  "cure"  al 
most  every  disease;  to  two  hair  removers,  one  an  "Indian  Sec 
ret",  the  other  an  "accidental  discovery",  both  either  fakes  or 
dangerous;  to  the  lying  claims  of  Hall's  Catarrh  Cure,  that  it 
is  "a  positive  cure  for  catarrh",  in  all  its  stages;  to  "Syrup  of 
Figs",  which  is  not  a  fig  syrup,  but  a  preparation  of  senna;  to 
Dr.  Kilmer's  Swamp  Root,  of  which  the  principal  medical  con 
stituent  is  alcohol;  and,  finally,  to  Dr.  Bye's  Oil  Cure  for  cancer, 
a  particularly  cruel  swindle  on  unfortunates  suffering  from  an 
incurable  malady.  All  of  these,  with  other  matter,  which  for 
the  sake  of  decency  I  do  not  care  to  detail  in  these  columns, 
appear  in  recent  issues  of  the  "Christian  Endeavor  World". 

Riches  in  Glory 

There  came  recently  to  Los  Angeles  a  "world- 
famous  evangelist",  known  as  "Gipsy"  Smith.  There 
was  a  shirt-waist  strike  at  the  time,  and  the  girls  were 
starving,  and  they  sent  a  delegation  to  this  evangelist 
to  ask  for  help.  They  told  him  how  they  were  mis 
treated,  exposed  to  insults,  driven  to  sell  their  virtue  be 
cause  their  wage  would  not  support  life;  and  to  their 


218  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

plea  he  made  answer:   "Get  Jesus  in  your  hearts,  and 
these  questions  will  take  care  of  themselves !" 

So  we  see  the  most  important  of  the  many  services 
which  the  churches  perform  for  the  merchants — taking 
the  revolutionary  hope  of  Jesus,  for  a  kingdom  of 
heaven  upon  earth,  and  perverting  it  into  a  dream  of  a 
golden  harp  in  an  uncertain  future.  To  appreciate  the 
fullness  of  this  betrayal,  take  the  prayer  which  Jesus 
dictated — so  simple,  direct  and  practical :  "Give  us  this 
day  our  daily  bread",  and  put  it  beside  the  hymns  which 
the  slave-congregations  are  trained  to  sing.  In  my 
neighborhood  is  a  one-roomed  building  with  a  plate 
glass  front,  upon  which  I  observe  a  painter  inscribing 
in  red,  white  and  blue  letters  the  sign  "Glory  Mission". 
I  approach  him,  and  he  drops  his  work  and  welcomes 
me  with  eager  cordiality.  Am  I  "living  in  grace"?  I 
answer  that  I  am.  I  have  to  shout  the  good  tidings  into 
his  ear,  as  he  is  very  deaf.  He  presents  me  with  his 
card,  which  shows  that  he  bears  the  title  of  "Rev 
erend",  also  the  sobriquet  of  "Mountain  Missionary".  I 
ask  him  to  permit  me  to  examine  the  hymn-book  which 
he  uses  in  his  work,  and  with  touching  eagerness  he 
presses  upon  me  a  well-worn  volume  bearing  the  title 
"Waves  of  Glory".  I  seat  myself  and  note  down  a  few 
of  the  baits  it  sets  out  for  hungry  wage-slaves : 

0,  there's  a  plenty,  0,  there's  a  plenty, 
There's  a  plenty  in  my  Father's  bank  above! 

Riches  in  glory,  riches  in  glory, 
Royal  supply  our  wants  exceed! 

Feasting,  I'm  feasting, 

I'm  feasting  with  my  Lord! 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  219 

Beautiful  robes,  beautiful  robes, 
Beautiful  robes  we  then  shall  wear! 

Jerusalem  the  golden, 
With  milk  and  honey  blest! 

Yes,  I'll  meet  you  in  the  city  of  the  New  Jerusalem, 
I'll  be  there,  I'll  be  there! 

Blest  Canaan  land,  bright  Canaan  land, 
I  love  to  be  in  Canaan  land! 

Oh,  Beulah  land,  sweet  Beulah  land, 
As  on  the  highest  mount  I  stand, 
I  look  away  across  the  sea, 
Where  mansions  are  prepared  for  me! 

In  the  sweet  bye  and  bye 

We  shall  meet  on  that  beautiful  shore — 

I  stopped  there,  being  reminded  of  Joe  Hill,  poet  of 
the  I.  W.  W.  who  was  executed  a  few  years  ago  in  Utah, 
and  who  used  this  tune  in  his  little  red  book  of  revolu 
tionary  chants : 

You  will  eat,  bye  and  bye, 

In  the  glorious  land  above  the  sky; 

Work  and  pray,  live  on  hay, 

You'll  get  pie  in  the  sky  when  you  die! 

Captivating  Ideals 

In  one  of  the  writer's  earlier  novels,  "Prince  Hag- 
en",  the  hero  is  a  Nibelung  out  of  Wagner's  "Rhein- 
gold",  who  leaves  his  diggings  in  the  bowels  of  the 
earth,  and  comes  up  to  look  into  our  superior  civiliza 
tion.  The  thing  that  impresses  him  most  is  what  he 
calls  "the  immortality  idea".  The  person  who  got  that 
up  was  a  world-genius,  he  exclaims.  "If  you  can  once 
get  a  man  to  believing  in  immortality,  there  is  no  more 


220  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

left  for  you  to  desire ;  you  can  take  everything  he  owns 
— you  can  skin  him  alive  if  it  pleases  you — and  he  will 
bear  it  all  with  perfect  good  humor." 

And  is  that  merely  the  spiritual  deficiency  of  a  Nibe- 
lung — or  the  effort  of  a  young  author  to  be  smart? 
Would  you  like  to  hear  that  view  of  the  most  vital  of 
Christian  doctrines  set  forth  in  the  language  of  schol 
arship  and  culture?  Would  you  like  to  know  how  an 
ecclesiastical  authority,  equipped  with  every  tool  of 
modern  learning,  would  set  about  voicing  the  idea  that 
the  function  of  the  teaching  of  Heaven  is  to  chloroform 
the  poor,  so  that  the  rich  may  continue  to  rob  them  in 
security  ? 

Here  under  my  hand  is  a  volume  in  the  newest  dress 
of  scholarship,  dated  1912,  and  written  by  Professor 
Georges  Chatterton-Hill,  of  the  University  of  Geneva. 
Its  title  is  "The  Sociological  Value  of  Christianity",  and 
from  cover  to  cover  it  is  a  warning  to  the  rich  of  the 
danger  they  run  in  giving  up  their  religion  and  ceasing 
to  support  its  priests.  It  explains  how  "the  genius  of 
Christianity  has  succeeded  in  making  the  individual 
suffering,  the  individual  sacrifices,  which  are  indis- 
pensible  for  the  welfare  of  the  collectivity,  appear  as 
indispensible  for  the  individual  welfare."  The  learned 
professor  makes  plain  just  what  he  means  by  "individ 
ual  suffering,  individual  sacrifices";  he  means  all  the 
horrors  of  capitalism ;  and  the  advantage  of  Christian 
ity  is  that  it  makes  you  think  that  by  submitting  to 
these  horrors,  you  are  profiting  your  own  soul.  "By 
making  individual  salvation  depend  on  the  acceptance 
of  suffering,  on  the  voluntary  sacrifice  of  egotistical 
interests,  Christianity  adapts  the  individual  to  society". 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  221 

And  this,  as  the  professor  explains,  is  not  an  easy  thing 
to  do,  in  a  world  in  which  so  many  people  are  thinking 
for  themselves.  "The  only  means  of  causing  the  ration 
alized  individual  to  consent  to  the  sacrifice is  to 

captivate  him  with  a  sufficiently  powerful  ideal"  And 
the  professor  shows  how  beautifully  Jesus  can  be  used 
for  this  purpose.  "Jesus,  the  so-called  humanitarian, 
never  ceased  to  insist  on  the  necessity  of  suffering,  the 
desirableness  of  suffering — of  that  suffering  which  a 
weak  and  sickly  humanitarianism  would  fain  suppress 
if  it  could." 

You  get  this,  you  "blanket-stiff",  you  "husky",  or 
"wop",  or  whatever  you  are — you  disinherited  of  the 
earth,  you  proletarians  who  have  only  your  labor-power 
to  sell,  you  weak  and  sickly  ones  who  are  condemned  to 
elimination?  There  has  come,  let  us  say,  a  period  of 
"overproduction" ;  you  have  raised  too  much  food,  and 
therefore  you  are  starving,  you  have  woven  too  much 
cloth,  and  therefore  you  are  naked,  you  have  finished 
the  world  for  your  masters,  and  it  is  time  for  you  to 
move  out  of  the  way.  As  the  sociologist  from  Geneva 
phrases  it,  "Your  suppression  imposes  itself  as  an  im 
perious  necessity."  And  the  function  of  the  Christian 
religion  is  to  make  you  enjoy  the  process,  by  "capti 
vating  you  with  a  sufficiently  powerful  ideal"!  The 
priest  will  fill  your  nostrils  with  incense,  your  eyes  with 
candle-lights  and  images,  your  ears  with  sweet  music 
and  soothing  words;  and  so  you  will  perish  without 
raising  a  finger!  "Here,"  reflects  the  professor,  "we  see 
how  magnificently  the  teaching  of  Jesus  applies  to  all 
classes  of  society!" 

Somebody  has  evidently  put  up  to  our  Christian 


222  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

sociologist  the  embarrassing  fact  that  so  many  of  those 
who  survive  under  the  capitalist  system  are  godless 
scoundrels.  But  do  you  think  that  troubles  him?  Not 
for  long.  Like  all  religious  thinkers,  he  carries  with 
his  scholar's  equipment  a  pair  of  metaphysical  wings, 
wherewith  at  any  moment  he  may  soar  into  the  em 
pyrean,  out  of  reach  of  vulgar  materialists,  like  you  and 
me.  "Inequality  signifies  inequality  of  capacity,"  he 
explains;  but  the  standard  whereby  we  judge  this  ca 
pacity  "cannot  be  the  standard  of  the  moral  law." 

The  laws  which  govern  the  biological  evolution  of  man  are 
known,  but  those  which  govern  his  moral  nature  cannot  be 
known;  the  moral  nature  appertains  to  the  Absolute,  and  hence 
is  not  subject  to  the  law  of  inequality! 

As  an  exhibition  of  metaphysical  wing-power,  that 
is  almost  as  wonderful  as  the  flight  of  Cardinal  New 
man  when  confronted  with  the  fact  that  his  divinely 
guided  church  had  burned  men  for  teaching  the  Coper- 
nican  view  of  the  universe;  that  infallible  popes  had 
again  and  again  condemned  this  heresy  ex  cathedra. 
Said  the  eloquent  cardinal : 

Scripture  says  that  the  sun  moves  and  the  earth  is  stationary, 
and  science  that  the  earth  moves  and  the  sun  is  comparatively 
at  rest.  How  can  we  determine  which  of  these  opposite  state 
ments  is  the  very  truth  till  we  know  what  motion  is? 

Spook  Hunting 

Do  not  imagine  that  it  is  only  in  Geneva  that  Chris 
tian  professors  realize  this  peril  from  the  loss  of  faith. 
It  is  never  far  from  the  thoughts  of  any  of  them — for, 
of  course,  no  man  can  look  at  the  present  system  and 
not  wonder  how  the  poor  stand  it,  and  more  es 
pecially  why  they  stand  it.  There  have  been  many 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  223 

thinking  men  who  have  given  up  the  miracle-business 
quite  cheerfully,  but  have  stood  appalled  at  the-idea  of 
letting  the  lower  classes  find  out  the  truth.  You  note 
that  idea  continually  in  the  writings  of  Professor  Gold- 
win  Smith,  who  was  a  free-thinker,  but  also  a 
bourgeois  publicist,  with  a  deep  sense  of  responsibility 
to  the  money-masters  of  the  world.  He  was  about  as 
honest  a  man  as  •ihe  capitalist  system  can  produce ;  he 
was  the  beau  ideal  of  the  New  York  "Evening  Post", 
which  indicates  his  point  of  view.  He  wrote : 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  hope  of  compensation  in  a  fu 
ture  state,  for  a  short  measure  of  happiness  here,  has  materially 
helped  to  reconcile  the  less  favored  members  of  the  community 
to  the  inequalities  of  the  existing  order  of  things. 

When  I  was  a  student  in  Columbia  University,  I  took 
a  course  called  "Practical  Ethics",  under  a  professor 
by  the  name  of  Hyslop.  The  course  differed  from  most 
of  the  forty  that  I  tried,  in  that  it  gave  evidence  that 
the  professor  was  accustomed  to  read  the  morning 
paper.  He  had  learned  that  American  politics  were 
rotten ;  his  idea  of  "Practical  Ethics"  was  to  outline  in 
elaborate  detail  a  complete  scheme  of  constitutional 
changes  which  would  make  it  impossible  for  the  "boss" 
to  control  the  government.  I  think  I  must  have  been 
born  with  a  charm  against  bourgeois  thought,  for  the 
good  professor  never  fooled  me  an  instant ;  I  remember 
I  used  to  smile  at  the  idea  of  how  quickly  the  "boss" 
would  brush  through  his  constitutional  cobwebs.  The 
reforms  required  an  elaborate  campaign  of  publicity — 
and  of  course  long  before  they  could  be  put  into  prac 
tice,  the  politicians  would  be  ready  with  devices  to  make 
them  of  no  effect. 


224  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Soon  after  this,  my  ethical  professor  resigned  and 
went  to  hunting  spooks.  I  don't  want  to  be  unfair  to 
him;  I  know  that  he  is  a  determined  and  courageous 
man,  and  it  seems  possible  that  he  may  really  have 
bagged  some  spooks.  All  I  wish  to  point  out  here  is  the 
method  he  uses  in  seeking  to  persuade  the  heedless 
rich  to  support  the  spook-hunting  industry.  The  very 
same  argument  as  we  got  from  the  University  of  Ge 
neva  and  the  University  of  Toronto!  Says  our  head 
spook-hunter : 

There  has  been  no  belief  that  exercised  so  much  power  upon 
the  poor  as  that  in  a  future  life.  The  politicians,  men  of  the 
world,  have  known  this  so  well  as  to  postpone  the  day  of  po 
litical  judgment  by  it  for  many  years. 

And  again: 

The  Church,  having  lost  all  its  battles  with  science,  and  hav 
ing  abandoned  a  strenuous  intellectual  defense  of  its  funda 
mental  beliefs,  has  lost  its  power  over  the  poor  and  the  laboring 

classes The  spiritual  ideal  of  life  has  gone  out  of  the  masses 

as  well  as  the  classes,  and  nothing  is  left  but  a  venture  on  a 
struggle  with  wealth. 

And  again,  more  menacingly  yet : 

The  rich  will  learn  in  the  dangers  of  a  social  revolution 
that  the  poor  will  not  sacrifice  both  wealth  and  immortality. 

What  is  to  be  done  about  this?  The  question  ans 
wers  itself:  Step  up,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  empty 
your  purses  into  the  Psychical  Research  hat !  So  that 
we  may  accumulate  statistics  as  to  the  cost  of  milk  and 
honey  in  Jerusalem  the  Golden ! 

You  read  what  I  had  to  say  about  Bootstrap-lifters, 
and  the  Wholesale  Pickpockets'  Association  making  use 
of  their  incantations.  You  admired  my  ability  to  sling 
language,  but  not  my  taste ;  and  you  certainly  did  not 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  225 

think  that  I  would  back  my  rhetoric  with  facts.  But 
what  do  these  quotations  mean,  unless  they  mean  what 
I  have  said  ?  Are  not  these  three  professors  men  of  cul 
ture  ?  Are  they  not  as  "spiritual"  as  any  men  of  learn 
ing  you  can  find  in  our  present-day  society  ? 

And  now  stop  for  a  moment  and  put  yourself  in 
the  position  of  the  young  student  of  the  working-class, 
who  goes  to  these  books  and  discovers  that  truth  is 
not  truth,  but  only  a  bait  for  a  snare.  Who  discovers 
that  professors  of  ethics,  practical  or  impractical,  are 
not  interested  in  justice  among  men,  but  only  in  col 
lecting  funds  for  their  specialty;  that  in  order  to  get 
funds,  they  are  willing  to  teach  the  rich  how  to  para 
lyze  the  minds  of  the  poor!  Do  you  wonder  that  such 
young  students  conclude  that  bourgeois  thinkers  do  not 
know  what  honesty  is,  but  are  prostitutes,  retainers 
and  lackeys,  to  be  kicked  out  of  the  temple  of  truth  ? 

Running  the  Rapids 

And  now,  can  you  form  to  yourselves  a  clear  concept 
of  what  it  means  to  society  that  practically  all  its  moral 
teaching  should  be  in  the  hands  of  men  who  are  incapable 
of  clean,  straight  thinking?  That  all  the  intellectual 
prestige  of  the  Church  should  be  lent  to  the  support  of 
vagueness,  futility,  and  deliberate  evasion?  Here  we  are, 
all  of  us,  caught  in  the  most  terrific  social  crisis  of  his 
tory  ;  I  search  for  a  metaphor  to  picture  our  position,  and 
I  recall  a  canoe-trip  in  the  wilds  of  Ontario,  hundreds  of 
miles  down  a  long  swift  river.  You  sit  in  the  bow  of  the 
canoe,  your  partner  in  the  stern,  watching  ahead;  and 
there  comes  a  slide  of  smooth  green  water,  and  you  go 
over  it,  and  into  a  torrent  of  foaming  white,  which  seizes 

you  and  rushes  you  along  with  the  speed  of  a  race-horse. 
I* 


226  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

With  every  sense  alert,  you  watch  for  the  rocks,  and 
when  you  see  one,  you  dip  your  paddle  on  one  side  or 
the  other  and  with  a  quick  motion  draw  the  canoe  clear 
of  the  danger.  If  by  any  chance  you  fail  to  do  it,  over 
you  go,  and  your  partner  with  you,  and  all  your  belong 
ings  go  down-stream,  and  maybe  you  are  sucked  into  a 
whirlpool,  and  not  seen  for  several  hours  afterwards. 
Precisely  like  this  is  the  voyage  of  life,  for  the  whole  of 
society  and  for  every  individual.  The  paddle  which  would 
save  us  from  the  rocks  is  experimental  science;  but  in 
most  of  our  canoes  we  put  a  man  who  has  no  paddle,  but 
a  Holy  Book;  and  he  casts  up  his  eyes  and  murmurs 
words  in  ancient  Greek  and  Hebrew,  and  now  and  then, 
when  he  sees  an  especially  formidable  obstruction — a 
war,  or  the  gonococcus,  or  the  I.  W.  W. — he  casts  a 
holy  wafer  upon  the  foaming  torrent. 

And  mind  you,  it  isn't  as  if  I  could  save  myself  and 
you  could  save  yourself;  we  are  all  in  the  same  canoe, 
and  we  all  go  overboard  together.  You,  perhaps,  have  a 
son  who  is  drafted  into  the  trenches  in  winter-time,  and 
drowned  in  blood  and  mud,  because  in  Europe  the  Cath 
olic  party  supported  militarism,  and  kept  aristocratic 
criminals  in  control  of  states.  Or  you  find  yourself  in 
volved  in  a  marital  tragedy,  and  in  order  to  free  yourself 
from  unendurable  misery,  you  are  obliged  to  go  to  law- 
courts  dominated  by  the  tradition  of  Paul,  the  Roman 
bureaucrat,  who  despised  women,  and  regarded  marriage 
as  a  means  of  gratifying  an  unclean  animal  desire.  "It  is 
better  to  marry  than  to  burn,"  he  said,  with  unmatchable 
brutality;  and  so  of  course  those  who  think  him  a  voice 
of  God  can  form  no  conception  of  the  dignity  and  grace 
of  love,  and  if  you  want  sound  and  wholesome  sex- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  227 

conventions,  you  will  be  as  apt  to  find  them  among  the 
Ashantees  or  the  Kamchadals  as  among  the  followers  of 
the  Apostle  to  the  Gentiles. 

You  go  to  a  so-called  "divorce-court/*  which  is  domi 
nated  by  this  Christian  taboo,  and  exists  for  the  purpose 
of  barring  you  from  a  second  chance  at  the  gratification 
of  your  unclean  animal  desire.  You  are  not  permitted  to 
tell  your  own  story,  for  that  would  be  "collusion;"  you 
listen  while  your  intimate  friends  recite  the  pitiful  and 
shameful  details  of  your  domestic  misfortune,  under  the 
cross-questioning  of  lawyers  who  have  suppressed  for  the 
time  whatever  decent  instincts  they  may  possess,  and 
follow  blindly  the  details  of  a  prescribed  procedure,  at 
the  cost  of  all  sincerity,  humanity  and  truth.  The  next 
morning  you  find  that  the  privacy  guaranteed  you  by  law 
has  been  taken  from  you  by  corrupt  court  officials,  who 
have  sold  copies  of  the  testimony  to  the  newspapers,  so 
that  all  the  intimate  details  of  where  you  slept  and  where 
your  wife  slept  and  what  you  saw  your  wife  doing  have 
been  thrown  out  to  journalistic  jackals,  who  scream  with 
glee  as  they  rend  the  carcass  of  your  dead  love.  And  in 
the  end,  perhaps,  you  find  that  you  have  gone  through 
this  horror  for  nothing — the  august  court  with  its  Roman 
Catholic  judge  throws  out  your  petition,  its  suspicions 
having  been  excited  by  the  fact  that  when  you  discovered 
your  domestic  tragedy,  you  sought  to  behave  like  a 
civilized  person,  with  pity  and  self-restraint,  instead  of 
like  a  sultan  in  Turkey,  or  a  basso  in  an  Italian  grand 
opera. 

Birth  Control 

I  assert  that  the  control  of  our  thinking  on  ethical 
questions  by  minds  enslaved  to  tradition  and  priestcraft 


228  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

is  an  unmitigated  curse  to  the  race.  The  armory  of  sci 
ence  is  full  of  weapons  which  might  be  used  to  slay  the 
monsters  of  disease  and  vice — but  these  weapons  are  not 
allowed  to  be  employed,  sometimes  not  even  to  be  men 
tioned.  Consider  the  misery  which  is  piling  itself  up  in 
the  slums  of  our  great  cities — the  degenerate,  the  defec 
tive,  the  insane,  who  are  multiplying  as  never  before  in 
history.  There  exists  a  perfectly  harmless  and  painless 
method  oi  sterilizing  the  hopelessly  unfit,  so  that  they 
can  not  reproduce  their  hopeless  unfitness;  but  religion 
objects  to  this  operation,  and  so  the  law  does  not  make 
use  of  this  knowledge.  There  exists  a  simple,  entirely 
harmless,  and  practically  costless  method  of  preventing 
conception,  which  would  enable  us  to  check  the  blind  and 
futile  fecundity  of  Nature,  and  to  multiply  as  gods  in 
stead  of  as  animals.  Consider  the  festering  mass  of  mis 
ery  in  the  slums  of  our  great  cities ;  consider  the  millions 
of  terrified,  poverty-hounded  women,  bearing  one  half- 
nurtured  infant  after  another,  struggling  desperately  to 
feed  and  care  for  them,  and  seeing  them  drop  into  the 
grave  as  fast  as  they  are  born — until  finally  the  mother, 
worn  out  with  the  Sisyphean  labor,  gives  up  and  follows 
her  misbegotten  offspring.  Consider  how  many  women, 
in  their  agony  and  despair,  make  use  of  the  methods  of 
the  primitive  savage,  to  escape  from  Nature's  curse  of 
fecundity.  Dr.  Wm.  J.  Robinson  has  estimated  that  in 
the  United  States  alone  there  are  a  million  abortions 
every  year;  and  consider  that  all  this  hideous  mass  of 
suffering — a  bloody  European  war  going  on  continually, 
unheeded  by  any  newspaper  correspondent — might  be 
avoided  by  the  use  of  a  simple  sterilizing  formula,  which 
we  are  not  permitted  to  give !  The  Federation  of  Catholic 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  229 

Societies  have  placed  a  law  upon  the  statute-books  of 
the  nation,  and  of  all  the  states  as  well ;  the  whole  power 
of  police  and  courts  and  jails  is  at  the  service  of  religious 
bigots,  and  a  young  girl  is  sent  to  prison  and  forcibly  fed 
with  a  tube  through  the  nose  for  telling  poverty-ridden 
slum-women  how  to  keep  from  becoming  pregnant ! 

And  go  among  the  sleek,  cynical  men  of  the  world, 
the  judges  and  district  attorneys,  the  commissioners  of 
correction  and  doctors  who  perpetrated  this  infamy  under 
a  so-called  "reform"  administration  in  New  York  City — 
and  what  do  you  find?  The  first  thing  you  find  is  that 
they  themselves,  one  and  all,  practice  birth-control  with 
their  wives  or  their  mistresses.  The  second  thing  you 
find  is  that  the  statute-books  are  crowded  with  other 
laws  which  they  make  no  pretense  of  enforcing;  for  ex 
ample,  the  law  which  forbids  the  saloons  to  be  open  on 
Sunday — which  law  they  take  the  liberty  of  understand 
ing  to  mean  that  the  saloons  shall  not  have  their  front 
doors  open  on  Sunday.  You  will  find  that  they  are  not  at 
all  afraid  of  the  religious  taboos;  they  are  afraid  of  the 
religious  vote — and  even  more  they  are  afraid  of  the  cam 
paign  contributions  of  sweat-shop  manufacturers  and 
landlords,  who  cannot  see  what  would  become  of  pros 
perity  if  the  women  of  the  slums  were  to  cease  to  breed. 
So  once  more  we  discover  the  wolf  in  sheep's  clothing, 
the  trader,  making  use  of  Tradition-worship ;  hiding  be 
hind  the  skirts  of  devout  old  maiden  aunts  and  grand 
mothers,  who  repeat  the  instructions  which  God  gave  to 
Adam  and  Eve,  "Be  fruitful  and  multiply  and  replenish 
the  earth."  As  if  God  were  as  blind  as  a  Fifth  Avenue 
preacher,  and  could  see  no  difference  between  the  Garden 
of  Eden,  full  of  all  fruits  that  grow  and  all  creatures  that 


230  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

run  and  fly  and  swim,  and  a  modern  East  Side  tenement- 
room,  with  an  oil  stove  and  no  windows  and  no  water- 
closet,  and  the  price  of  cabbage  seven  cents  a  pound ! 

Sheep 

There  are  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  Protestant 
churches  in  America.  They  own  more  than  a  billion  dol 
lars'  worth  of  property,  and  in  the  West  and  South  they 
dominate  the  intellectual  life  of  the  country.  I  do  not 
wish  to  be  unfair  in  what  I  say  of  them.  They  are  far 
more  democratic  than  the  Catholic  Church;  they  fight 
valiantly  against  the  liquor  traffic  and  those  forms  of 
graft  which  are  obvious,  or  directly  derived  from  vice. 
There  are  among  their  clergy  many  men  who  are  honestly 
seeking  light,  and  trying  to  make  their  institutions  a 
factor  for  progress.  But  they  are  caught  in  the  spirit 
of  Lutheran  scholasticism,  narrow  and  ignorant,  dog 
matic  and  jealous ;  and  they  cannot  help  it,  because  they 
are  pledged  by  their  creeds  and  foundations  to  Tradition- 
worship;  they  have  to  believe  certain  things  because 
their  ancestors  believed  them,  they  have  to  act  in  certain 
ways,  because  of  certain  facts  which  existed  in  the  world 
three  thousand  years  ago,  but  which  now  are  known  only 
to  historians. 

You  are  familiar  with  the  habit  of  a  herd  of  sheep  to 
follow  the  example  of  their  leader;  if  this  leader  leaps 
over  a  stick,  all  the  rest  will  leap  when  they  come  to  that 
spot,  even  though  the  stick  may  have  been  taken  away  in 
the  meantime.  The  scientist  explains  this  seeming- 
foolishness  by  the  fact  that  sheep  once  lived  in  high 
mountains,  and  fled  from  their  enemies  in  swiftly  rushing 
herds ;  when  the  leader  leaped  across  an  abyss,  the  others 
had  to  leap,  without  waiting  to  see  in  the  dust  and  con- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  231 

fusion.  Now  there  are  no  mountains  and  no  enemies,  but 
the  sheep  still  jump.  And  in  exactly  the  same  way  the 
tailor  still  sews  buttons  at  the  back  of  your  dress-coat, 
because  a  couple  of  hundred  years  ago  all  gentlemen  wore 
swords ;  in  the  same  way  our  railroad  builders  make  cars 
narrow  and  uncomfortable  and  liable  to  overturn,  because 
a  hundred  years  ago  all  cars  were  hauled  by  mules.  In 
the  same  way  the  Orthodox  Hebrew  will  eat  no  pork,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  the  microscope  affords  him  complete 
protection  against  disease ;  the  orthodox  Catholic  will  not 
eat  meat  on  Friday,  because  he  thinks  Jesus  was  crucified 
on  that  day;  the  orthodox  Anglican  will  not  marry  his 
deceased  wife's  sister,  because  of  something  he  reads  in 
Leviticus ;  the  orthodox  Baptist  requires  total  immersion 
in  a  climate  quite  different  from  that  of  Palestine;  the 
orthodox  Methodist  refuses  to  enjoy  fresh  air  and  exer 
cise  on  the  Sabbath. 

In  ancient  Judea,  you  see,  the  people  lived  an  open-air 
life,  tending  sheep  and  working  the  fields;  so  it  was  an 
excellent  thing  for  them  to  rest  from  labor  one  day  of 
the  week,  and  to  gather  in  temples  to  hear  the  reading 
of  the  best  literature  of  their  time.  But  nowadays  the  city 
slave  spends  his  week-days  shut  up  in  an  office,  poring 
over  a  ledger,  or  in  a  sweat-shop,  chained  to  a  sewing- 
machine.  Obviously,  therefore,  the  thing  to  do  on  the 
seventh  day  is  to  lure  him  into  the  open  air,  and  persuade 
him  to  run  and  play.  But  do  we  do  that,  we  human  sheep? 
We  write  ancient  Hebrew  laws  upon  our  modern  statute- 
books,  and  if  the  city  slave  goes  into  a  vacant  lot  and  tries 
to  play  base-ball,  we  send  a  policeman  and  take  him  to 
jail,  and  next  morning  he  is  fined  five  dollars,  and  prob 
ably  loses  his  ]ob. 


232  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

In  the  city  where  I  live,  a  city  supposed  to  be  free  and 
enlightened,  but  in  reality  heavily  burdened  with 
churches,  there  are  tennis  courts  built  and  paid  for  out 
of  public  funds,  my  own  included ;  yet  I  cannot  use  these 
tennis  courts  on  Sunday,  because  of  the  ancient  Hebrew 
taboo.  My  mail  is  not  delivered  to  me,  the  swimming 
pool  in  the  park  is  closed  to  me,  the  library  is  closed 
nearly  all  day.  If  I  enquire  about  it,  I  am  told  that  it  fs 
desirable  that  city  employees  should  have  one  day's  rest 
a  week ;  but  when  I  ask  why  it  might  not  be  possible  to 
relay  the  employees,  so  that  they  might  all  have  one,  or 
even  two  days'  rest  a  week,  and  still  give  the  public  their 
rights  on  Sunday,  there  is  no  answer.  But  I  know  the 
answer,  having  probed  our  politics  of  hypocrisy.  There 
is  a  "church  vote"  at  which  all  politicians  tremble ;  there 
are  clergymen,  humanly  jealous  when  their  peculiar  graft 
is  threatened,  and  hoping  that  if  the  law  enforces  a  gen 
eral  boredom,  the  public  may  be  more  disposed  to  endure 
the  boredom  of  sermons. 

In  New  York  City  the  theaters  are  closed  on  Sunday ; 
but  moving  pictures  having  come  into  being  since  the 
days  of  Puritan  rule,  the  picture-shows  are  free  to  keep 
open.  The  law  permits  "sacred  concerts" — which,  under 
this  benevolent  sway  of  Tammany,  has  come  to  mean  any 
sort  of  vaudeville ;  so  what  we  have  is  a  free  rein  to  the 
imbecilities  of  "Mutt  &  Jeff"  and  the  obscenities  of 
Anna  Held  and  Gaby  Deslys — while  we  bar  the  greatest 
moralists  of  our  times,  such  as  Ibsen  and  Brieux. 

I  speak  with  some  crossness  of  this  Sabbath  taboo, 
because  of  an  experience  which  once  befell  me.  In  the 
second  decade  of  this  century  of  enlightenment  and  pro 
gress,  in  our  free  American  democracy,  whose  constitu- 


THE  PROFITS   or  RELIGION  233 

tion  proclaims  religious  toleration,  and  forbids  the  estab 
lishment  by  the  state  of  any  form  of  worship,  I  was  made 
to  serve  a  sentence  of  eighteen  hours  in  the  state  prison 
of  Delaware  for  playing  a  game  of  tennis  on  the  Sabbath. 
I  was  duly  arrested  upon  a  warrant,  duly  sentenced  by 
a  magistrate,  duly  clad  in  a  prison  costume,  duly  set  to 
work  upon  a  stone-pile,  duly  locked  up  over  night  in  a 
steel-barred  cell  full  of  vermin — in  a  building  housing 
some  five  hundred  wretches,  black  and  white,  thirty  of 
them  serving  life-terms  under  circumstances  which  never 
permitted  them  a  breath  of  fresh  air  nor  a  glimpse  of  the 
sunshine  or  the  sky.  They  had  no  exercise  court  to  their 
prison,  and  the  inmates  were  not  permitted  to  speak  to 
one  another,  but  ate  their  meals  in  dead  silence,  and 
walked  back  to  their  cells  with  folded  arms,  and  had  their 
only  occupation  working  for  a  sweat-shop  contractor; 
this  on  the  outskirts  of  the  pious  city  of  Wilmington, 
with  no  less  than  ninety-one  churches !  The  writer  was  in 
formed  that  he  would  return  to  this  institution  regularly 
every  week  unless  he  abandoned  his  godless  habit  of  play 
ing  tennis  on  a  private  club  court  on  Sunday;  he  only 
escaped  the  painful  punishment  by  making  the  discovery 
that  at  the  Wilmington  Country  Club  it  was  the  custom 
of  the  leading  officials  of  the  city  and  state  to  play  golf 
every  Sunday,  and  by  threatening  to  employ  detectives 
and  have  these  mighty  ones  arrested  and  sent  to  their 
own  prison.  Which  shows  again  the  importance  of  un 
derstanding  the  relationship  of  Superstition  and  Big 
Business! 


BOOK  SIX 

The  Church  of  the  Quacks 

They  may  talk  as  they  please  about  what  they  call  pelf, 
And  how  one  ought  never  to  think  of  one's  self, 
And  how  pleasures   of  thought   surpass   eating  and 
drinking — 

My  pleasure  of  thought  is  the  pleasure  of  thinking 

How  pleasant  it  is  to  have  money,  heigh  ho ! 
How  pleasant  it  is  to  have  money. 

Clough. 


235 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  237 

Tabula  Rasa 

Nature  has  given  us  a  virgin  continent,  a  clean  slate 
upon  which  to  write  what  we  will.  And  what  are  we 
writing?  What  is  our  intellectual  life?  I  came  to  the 
far  West,  which  I  had  been  taught  by  novelists  and 
poets  to  think  of  as  a  place  of  freedom.  I  came,  be 
cause  I  like  freedom;  I  am  staying  because  I  like  the 
climate.  I  find  that  what  freedom  means  in  the  West 
is  the  ability  of  ignorant  and  fanatical  persons  to  start 
some  new,  fantastical  quirk  of  scriptural  interpreta 
tion,  to  build  a  new  cult  around  it,  and  earn  a  living  out 
of  it. 

My  first  contact  with  that  sort  of  thing  was  when 
I  went  to  the  Battle  Creek  Sanitarium  to  investigate 
hydrotherapy,  and  found  myself  in  a  nest  of  Seventh- 
day  Adventists.  Three  generations  or  so  ago  some  odd 
character  hit  upon  the  discovery  that  the  Christian 
churches  had  let  the  devil  snare  them  into  resting  on 
the  first  day  of  the  week,  whereas  the  Bible  states  dis 
tinctly  that  the  Lord  "rested  on  the  seventh  day".  So 
here  is  a  million  dollar  establishment,  with  a  thousand 
or  two  patients  and  employees,  and  on  Friday  at  sun 
down  the  silence  of  death  settles  upon  the  place,  and 
stays  settled  until  sundown  of  Saturday,  when  every 
thing  comes  suddenly  to  life  again,  and  there  is  a  little 
celebration,  like  Easter  or  New  Year's,  with  what  I 
used  to  call  "sterilized  dancing" — the  men  pairing  with 
men  and  the  women  with  women. 

They  are  decent  and  kindly  people,  and  you  learn  to 
put  up  with  their  eccentricities ;  it  is  really  convenient 
in  some  ways,  because,  as  not  all  the  city  shares  their 
delusions,  there  are  some  stores  open  every  day  of  the 


238  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

week.  But  then  you  discover  that  the  Sanitarium  is 
training  "medical  missionaries"  to  send  to  Africa,  and 
is  teaching  these  supposed-to-be-scientists  that  evolu 
tion  is  a  doctrine  of  the  devil,  and  not  proven  anyhow ! 

You  get  the  shrewd  little  doctor  who  is  running  this 
establishment  alone  in  his  office,  and  he  will  smile  and 
admit  that  of  course  it  is  not  necessary  to  take  all  Bible 
phrases  literally;  but  you  know  how  it  is — there  are 
different  levels  of  intelligence,  and  so  on.  Yes,  I  know 
how  it  is.  You  have  an  institution  founded  upon  a  cer 
tain  dogma,  and  run  by  means  of  that  dogma,  and  it  is 
hard  to  change  without  smashing  things.  It  is  especial 
ly  convenient  when  servants  and  nurses  have  a  religious 
upbringing,  and  do  not  steal  the  pocket-books  of  the 
patients.  People  will  come  from  all  over  the  country> 
and  pay  high  prices  to  stay  in  such  a  sanitarium ;  you 
can  make  vegetarians  of  them,  which  you  think  more 
important  than  teaching  abstract  notions  about  their 
being  descended  from  monkeys.  Also  you  can  manufac 
ture  vegetarian  foods  for  them,  and  build  up  an  enor 
mous  business — so  obtaining  that  Power  which  is  the 
thing  desired  of  men. 

This  is  but  one  illustration  of  a  sort  of  thing  of 
which  I  could  cite  a  hundred.  The  city  in  which  I  live  is 
headquarters  of  another  sect,  the  "Pentecostal  Church 
of  the  Nazarene" ;  primitive  Methodists,  Bible-worship 
pers  not  content  with  the  King  James  version,  but  go 
ing  back  to  the  Sinaitic  MS.  They  have  a  "University", 
located  in  one  of  the  most  beautiful  spots  that  Nature 
ever  made;  an  institution  with  seventy-five  students. 
A  couple  of  years  ago  I  happened  to  meet  the  "presi 
dent,"  who  was  a  preacher  with  grease  on  the 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  239 

ample  expanse  of  his  black  broadcloth  waistcoat,  and  a 
speech  full  of  the  commonest  grammatical  errors,  such 
as  "you  was"  and  "I  seen".  The  past  year  witnessed  a 
split,  and  the  founding  of  a  brand  new  church  and 
"University" — because  one  of  the  preachers  insisted 
upon  preaching  so  much  that  the  students  got  no 
chance  to  study ;  also  because  he  sent  home  a  rich  man's 
daughter  whose  shirt-waists  revealed  too  much  of  her 
fleshly  nature. 

And  there  is  an  even  stranger  phenomenon  in  the 
locality,  taking  you  back  to  the  Libyan  desert  and  the 
time  of  Thais.  A  lady  friend  of  mine,  generously 
blessed  with  this  world's  goods,  asks  me  have  I  seen 
the  hermit.  "Hermit?"  I  say,  and  she  replies,  "Didn't 
you  know  there  was  a  hermit  ?  He  lives  on  a  mountain, 
in  a  cave,  and  never  has  anything  to  do  with  the  world. 
He  has  no  books;  he  contemplates  spiritually."  I  pic 
ture  my  friend  with  her  large  limousine,  a  rolling  palace 
full  of  ladies,  drawing  up  at  the  door  of  this  hermit's 
cave.  "He  received  you  ?"  I  ask.  "Yes,  he  was  quite  po 
lite."  "And  what  was  your  impression  of  him?"  "Oh, 
how  he  stank !"  I  answer  that  this  is  the  odor  of  sanc 
tity,  and  my  friend  thinks  that  I  am  enormously  witty ; 
I  have  to  explain  to  her  that  I  am  not  jesting,  but  that 
there  are  definite  physiological  phenomena  incidental 
to  the  ecstatic  life. 

The  Book  of  Mormon 

Or  let  us  take  a  trip  to  Salt  Lake  City,  the  head 
quarters  of  a  still  stranger  cult. 

On  the  morning  of  the  22nd  of  September,  1827, 
the  Angel  of  the  Lord  delivered  unto  Joseph  Smith,  Jr., 


240  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

an  ignorant  farmer-youth  in  a  "backwoods"  part  of 
New  York  State,  some  plates  which  had  "the  appear 
ance  of  gold".  As  we  know  from  the  scriptures,  it  is 
the  habit  of  the  Angel  of  the  Lord  to  appear  in  unex 
pected  places  and  to  make  miraculous  revelations  to 
men  in  humble  walks  of  life ;  so,  as  devout  believers,  we 
hold  ourselves  in  readiness.  In  this  case  the  plates 
were  written  in  "reformed  Egyptian";  but  the  Angel 
thoughtfully  provided  Joseph  Smith,  Jr.,  with  Urim  and 
Thummim,  two  magic  stones  with  which  to  read  the 
records.  They  proved  to  deal  with  a  mystery  which 
has  haunted  the  minds  of  Bible  students  for  centuries 
— the  fate  of  the  "lost  ten  tribes  of  Israel",  who  were 
now  revealed  to  have  been  the  ancestors  of  the  Amer 
ican  Indians.  The  Angel  told  Smith  to  found  a  new  re 
ligion,  and  gave  him  prophecies  concerning  things  in 
general;  so,  on  the  6th  of  April,  1830,  in  the  town  of 
Manchester,  N.  Y.,  there  was  formally  launched  the 
"Church  of  the  Latter  Day  Saints."  Smith  turned  over 
to  his  followers  hi-  translation  of  the  miraculous  plates, 
called  "The  Book  of  Mormon" ;  obviously  genuine,  for 
it  read  precisely  like  the  books  which  we  already  know 
are  the  revealed  word  of  God.  But,  on  chance  that  this 
might  not  be  sufficient,  we  were  offered  in  the  preface 
two  documents,  the  "Testimony  of  Three  Witnesses", 
and  the  "Further  Testimony  of  Eight  Witnesses".  The 
latter  being  the  shorter,  may  be  quoted : 

Be  it  known  unto  all  nations,  kindreds,  tongues  and  people, 
unto  whom  this  work  shall  come:  That  Joseph  Smith  Jr.,  the 
translator  of  this  work,  has  shewn  unto  us  the  plates  of  which 
hath  been  spoken,  which  have  the  appearance  of  gold;  and  as 
many  of  the  leaves  as  the  said  Smith  hath  translated,  we  did 
handle  with  our  hands;  and  we  also  saw  the  engravings  there- 


THE  .PROFITS  OF  KELIGION  241 

on,  all  of  which  has  the  appearance  of  ancient  work  and  of 
curious  workmanship.  And  this  we  bear  record  with  words  of 
soberness,  that  the  said  Smith  has  shewn  unto  us,  for  we  have 
seen  and  hefted,  and  know  of  a  surety  that  the  said  Smith 
hath  got  the  plates  of  which  we  have  spoken.  And  we  give  our 
names  unto  the  world,  to  witness  that  which  we  have  seen,  and 
we  lie  not,  God  bearing  witness  of  it. 

Christian  Whitmer 
Jacob   Whitmer 
Peter  Whitmer,  Jr. 
John  Whitmer 
Hiram  Page 
Joseph    Smith,    Sr. 
Hyrum  Smith 
Saml.  H.  Smith 

The  subsequent  career  of  the  Church  of  the  Latter 
Day  Saints  bore  out  the  AngePs  prophesies  and  proved 
conclusively  its  divine  origin ;  it  was  persecuted  as  the 
saints  of  old  were  persecuted,  and  its  followers  pro 
ceeded  to  massacre  the  nearby  unbelieving  populations, 
just  as  the  divinely  guided  Hebrews  had  done.  Driven 
from  place  to  place,  they  built  at  Nauvoo,  111.,  a  beau 
tiful  temple,  according  to  plans  revealed  in  a  vision, 
exactly  like  Solomon.  Finally  they  settled  in  Utah, 
where  they  have  a  magnificent  marble  tabernacle,  and 
some  300,000  followers.  The  United  States  govern 
ment,  not  being  entirely  Biblical,  objected  to  their  prac 
tice  of  allowing  the  patriarchs  of  the  tribe  to  have  as 
many  wives  as  they  could  support ;  the  government  con 
fiscated  the  church's  property,  and  forced  it  to  conceal 
the  practice  of  polygamy,  as  is  done  by  elderly  church 
members  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  Recently  the 
head  of  the  church,  who  bears  the  title  of  "Prophet, 
Seer  and  Revelator",  was  persuaded  to  permit  an  ex- 

16 


242  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

amination  of  one  of  its  secret  plates,  the  "Book  of 
Abraham",  by  egyptolo gists,  who  found  that  it  was  or 
dinary  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  not  "reformed",  but 
containing  prayers  to  the  sun-god.  But  this  will  of 
course  make  no  difference  to  the  devout  followers  of 
Joseph — any  more  than  it  has  made  to  devout  Cath 
olics  and  Episcopalians  that  German  scholars  have 
proven  that  the  Bible  legends  and  ritual  have  come 
from  the  Babylonians,  and  that  the  four  gospels  date 
from  the  second  and  third  centuries  after  Christ. 

Holy  Rolling 

All  over  America  you  will  find  these  weird  Bible- 
cults,  some  of  them  pathetic,  some  of  them  dangerous, 
some  of  them  merely  grotesque.  Thus,  for  example, 
there  was  John  Alexander  Dowie,  who  founded  the 
"Christian  Catholic  Church  in  Zion"  and  dressed  him 
self  up  in  scarlet  and  purple  robes  with  stars  on. 
Through  his  Zion  City  Bank  and  Zion  City  Realty  Com 
pany  he  became  enormously  wealthy;  he  finally  an 
nounced  himself  as  "Elijah  the  Restorer."  I  remember 
as  a  boy  how  he  brought  his  gospel  to  New  York,  and 
P.  T.  Barnum  with  Tom  Thumb  and  the  white  elephant 
never  made  such  a  sensation.  The  ridicule  of  the  me 
tropolis  overwhelmed  the  old  prophet,  and  he  died  and 
passed  on  his  robes  and  his  tabernacle  and  his  bank  to 
his  son;  straightway,  according  to  the  rule  of  all  re 
ligions,  the  followers  fell  to  quarrelling  and  splitting  up, 
and  suing  one  another  in  the  law-courts. 

Also  there  are  the  "Holy  Rollers"  and  "Holy  Jump 
ers",  ghastly  sects  which  cultivate  the  religious  hys 
terias,  and  have  spread  like  a  plague  among  the  womer 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  243 

of  our  lonely  prairie  farms  and  desert  ranches.  The 
"Holy  Rollers",  who  call  themselves  the  "Apostolic 
Church",  have  a  meeting  place  here  in  Pasadena,  and 
any  Sunday  evening  at  nine  o'clock  you  may  see  the 
Spirit  of  the  Lord  taking  possession  of  the  worshippers, 
causing  moans  and  shrieks  and  convulsions ;  you  may 
see  a  woman  holding  her  hands  aloft  for  seventeen  min 
utes  by  the  watch,  making  chattering  sounds  like  an 
ape.  This  is  called  "talking  in  tongues"  and  is  a  sign 
of  the  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  If  you  come  back 
at  eleven  in  the  evening,  you  will  find  the  entire  con 
gregation,  men  and  women,  prostrate  on  the  floor,  or 
hanging  over  the  benches ;  and  maybe  a  child  moaning 
in  terror,  having  a  devil  cast  out. 

You  may  be  interested,  perhaps,  to  know  how  to 
throw  yourself  into  these  convulsions.  Here  is  a  paper 
called  "Trust",  which  is  "published  Monthly  (D.  V.)  in 
the  interests  of  Elim  Faith  Work  and  Bible  Training 
School."  Elizabeth  Sisson  writes  on  "The  Pentecostal 
Baptism",  and  tells  the  story  of  her  experiences.  She 
"camped  on  the  Word  of  God,"  she  declares. 

I  went  up  to  Calgary  in  Canada,  and  the  leader  of  the  mis 
sion  told  me,  "You  can  go  down  to  the  mission  and  stay  there 
all  day.  There  is  plenty  of  wood,  and  you  can  stay  there  all 
night."  I  went  down,  and  there  was  plenty  of  "let  go"  in  me.  I 
cried,  and  prayed  all  I  knew,  and  got  wonderfully  loosed 

Then  the  Lord  said  to  me,  "Now,  no  more  praying!"  God 
told  me  it  was  mine.  What  was  there  left  for  me  to  pray  about. 
He  spoiled  my  praying  and  I  took  up  praising.  I  praised  God 
that  He  who  worked  in  the  Upper  Room  was  working  the  same 
in  me.  I  praised,  and  I  praised,  and  I  praised.  The  devil  said  to 
me,  "That's  mechanical."  I  said,  "I'll  praise  You  Lord,  and  if 
You  want  real  praise,  You'll  have  to  put  the  wind  in  the  sails." 

That's  the  way  I  came  through.    One  morning  I  was  just 


244  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

getting  out  of  bed,  "this  gibberish,  this  jargon"  as  the  enemy 
likes  to  call  it,  began  to  come.  The  Lord  said,  "Let  it  babble!" 
I  let.  The  babble  increased,  and  by  night  I  was  up  to  my  neck. 
I  let.  I  still  let.  That's  all.  Someone  else  does  the  work,  and  it 
does  not  tire  you. 

And  here  is  another  paper.  "Meat  in  Due  Season: 
published  monthly,  or  as  often  as  the  Lord  leads."  The 
editor  quotes  the  Bible,  "Call  upon  the  name  of  the 
Lord,"  and  explains  that  "Call  means  call."  The  word 
appears  to  have  a  special  meaning  to  these  pentecostal 
persons — it  means  working  yourself  into  a  frenzy  of 
agitation ;  as  the  editor  puts  it,  "you  must  lay  hold  of 
the  horns  of  the  altar."  He  goes  on  to  exhort — the 
bold  face  being  his : 

Pray  as  if  your  very  life  depended  upon  it!  The  first  few 
minutes  seemingly  all  the  powers  of  hell  will  contend  every 
word,  the  next  few,  relief  in  a  measure  will  come,  more  liberty 
in  calling.  In  a  very  little  while  you  will  be  dead  to  the  room,  dead 
to  the  chair,  dead  to  everyone  around  you,  dead  to  all  and  tre 
mendously  alive  to  your  desperate  need  and  emptyness;  this  con 
viction  will  grow  as  you  increase  calling  upon  Him.  It  maybe 
you'll  weep,  it  maybe  you'll  perspire,  it  maybe  your  clothing  will 
be  deranged,  it  maybe  your  throat  will  get  sore.  Never  for  a 
moment  let  your  mind  rest  on  the  condition  of  your  person. 
Open  your  mouth  and  God  has  promised  to  fill  it.  Ask  persist 
ently  until  the  very  floor  seems  to  sink  beneath  you  and  the 
fountains  of  the  deep,  of  your  heart  let  loose.  Like  David,  "pour 
out  your  soul"  like  one  would  pour  water  out  of  a  bucket.  I 
have  seen  hundreds  get  through  right  at  this  point.  When  self- 
thought,  reticence,  decorum,  reserve,  propriety  and  dignity  had 
all  been  thrown  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven.  Self  was  then  oblit 
erated  and  consciousness  of  person  gone.  Draw  near  to  God  and 
He  will  draw  near  to  you  saith  the  scripture,  but  you  must 
draw  near  to  Him  first. 

These  enthusiasts  derive  their  practices  from  the 
Shakers,  a  sect  which  originated  in  England,  but  was 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  245 

driven  by  persecution  to  the  New  World.  The  Shakers 
call  themselves  the  "United  Society  of  True  Believers 
in  Christ's  Second  Coming,"  and  were  founded  by  Ann 
Lee,  who  variously  termed  herself  the  "Female  Christ", 
the  "Holy  Comforter",  and  the  "God-anointed  Wom 
an".  They  might  be  termed  the  suffragettes  of  re 
ligion,  for  they  pray  always  to  "Our  Father  and  Moth 
er,  which  are  in  heaven."  They  were  taught  the  con 
venient  doctrine  that  their  Founder  had  "spiritual  il 
lumination",  so  that  any  evidence  of  the  senses  used 
against  her  might  deceive.  She  governed  through  ter 
ror,  holding  that  by  her  mental  powers  she  could  in 
flict  torment  upon  any  of  her  followers.  Fortunately  she 
taught  absolute  celibacy,  and  so  there  are  now  only 
about  a  thousand  of  her  disciples. 

Bible  Prophecy 

This  far  western  country  swarms  with  those  fanat 
ics  who  await  the  return  of  Christ,  and  find  in  Bible 
chronology  positive  evidence  that  he  is  coming  on  a 
specified  day.  Seldom  do  I  give  a  lecture  on  Socialism 
that  some  eager  old  lady  does  not  come  up  to  me  and 
point  out  how  futile  are  my  hopes,  because  the  Millen 
ium  will  come  before  the  Revolution.  Several  times  I 
have  come  on  an  item  in  the  newspapers,  telling  of  a 
group  of  people,  sometimes  whole  villages,  selling  their 
goods  and  going  out  into  the  fields  to  shout  and  sing 
and  pray,  expecting  the  vision  of  the  Lord  and  His 
Angels  in  the  skies.  I  have  in  my  hand  a  pamphlet  en 
titled  "Shekineh:  The  Glory  of  God  in  Israel,  Facts 
Mathematically  Foretold,  of  the  Soon  Coming  of  Our 
Blessed  Lord."  It  is  earnestly,  yearningly  written,  in 


246  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

that   spirit   of   feeble-minded   affectionateness   which 
the  Bible-sects  seem  to  encourage : 

Now  dear  reader  you  see  that  these  problems  tell  a  won 
derful  story  which  I  know  are  the  Eternal  Truths  of  God.  Jesus 
is  soon  coming.  I  believe  that  from  now  on  we  can  say,  next 
week  perhaps  our  blessed  Lord  will  return.  Yet  the  time  may  not 
end  till  the  close  of  the  A.  M.  year,  which  will  be  March  20th, 
1897.  But  let  us  take  up  the  sickle  of  God,  etc.  Oh,  my  Christian 
friends,  live  near  the  Blessed  Christ,  and  gain  eternal  life 
through  Jesus  Our  Lord! 

In  the  public  library  I  find  another  pamphlet,  en 
titled  "The  Our  Race,"  which  proves  that  the  "lost  ten 
tribes  of  Israel"  are  not  the  American  Indians,  but  the 
Irish !  And  here  is  a  publication  of  the  "Watch  Tower- 
Bible  and  Tract  Society,"  declaring: 

The  great  pyramid  in  Egypt  is  a  witness  to  all  the  events  of 
the  ages  and  of  our  day.  The  pyramid's  downward  passage  un 
der  "a  Draconis"  symbolizes  the  course  of  Sin.  Its  first  ascend 
ing  passage  symbolizes  the  Jewish  Age.  Its  Grand  Gallery  sym 
bolizes  the  Gospel  Age.  Its  upper  step  symbolizes  the  approach 
ing  period  of  tribulation  and  anarchy,  "Judgment"  upon  Chris 
tendom. 

It  is  a  Sunday  morning,  and  I  sit  in  the  California 
sunshine  revising  this  manuscript,  when  a  decorous- 
looking  young  man  approaches,  having  a  sack  over  his 
shoulder.  "From  the  Bible-students,"  he  says  politely, 
and  hands  me  a  little  paper,  "The  Bible  Students' 
Monthly :  an  Independent,  Unsectarian  Religious  News 
paper,  Specially  devoted  to  the  Forwarding  of  the  Lay 
men's  Home  Missionary  Movement  for  the  Glory  of  God 
and  Good  of  Humanity."  The  leading  article  is  headed 
"The  Fall  of  Babylon :  Ancient  Babylon  a  Type — Mys 
tic  Babylon  the  Antitype:  Why  Christendom  must 
Suffer — the  Final  Outcome."  A  note  explains : 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  247 

The  following  article  is  extracted  from  Pastor  Russell's 
posthumous  volume  entitled  "The  Finished  Mystery,"  the  7th  in 
the  series  of  his  Studies  in  the  Scriptures  and  published  subse 
quent  to  his  death.  Pastor  Russell  held  the  distinction  of  being 
the  most  fearless  and  powerful  writer  of  modern  times  on  ec 
clesiastical  subjects.  In  this  posthumous  volume,  which  is  called 
"his  last  legacy  to  the  Christians  on  earth,"  is  found  a  thorough 
exposition  of  every  verse  in  the  entire  book  of  Revelation  and 
also  an  elucidation  of  the  obscure  prophecy  of  Ezekiel.  The  book 
contains  608  pages,  handsomely  bound  in  embossed  cloth. 

Pastor  Russell  used  to  publish  a  two-column  ser 
mon  in  some  hundreds  of  Sunday  newspapers,  togeth 
er  with  a  presentment  of  his  features — solemn,  stiff, 
white-whiskered,  set  off  with  a  "choker"  and  a  black 
broadcloth  coat.  There  are  five  million  such  faces  in 
America,  but  if  you  have  an  impulse  to  despair  for 
your  country,  remember  that  it  produced  Mark  Twain 
and  Artemus  Ward,  as  well  as  Pastor  Russell  and  the 
Moody  and  Sankey  hymn-book.  I  quote  one  passage 
from  "The  Finished  Mystery",  in  order  that  the  reader 
may  know  what  it  means  to  "hold  the  distinction  of 
being  the  most  fearless  and  powerful  writer  of  modern 
times  on  ecclesiastical  subjects."  Pastor  Russell  does 
not  approve  of  the  Methodists,  and  he  quotes  twelve 
verses  of  Revelation,  line  by  line  and  phrase  by  phrase, 
showing  how  the  evil  course  and  downfall  of  the  Wes- 
leyan  system  were  divinely  foretold.  Thus : 

"But  that  they  should  be  tormented  five  months." — In  sym 
bolic  time,  150  years— 5X30  =  150.  (Ezek.  4:6.)  Wesley  became 
the  first  Methodist  in  1728.  (Rev.  9:1.)  When  the  Methodist 
denomination,  with  all  the  others,  was  cast  of?  from  favor  in 
1878  (Rev.  3:14)  its  powers  to  torment  men  by  preaching  what 
Presbyterians  describe  as  "Conscious  misery,  eternal  in  dura 
tion"  came  to  an  end  legally,  and  to  a  large  extent  actually. — 
Rev.  9:10. 


248  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

P.  S.  A  few  months  pass,  and  while  this  book  is  go 
ing  to  press,  "The  Finished  Mystery"  is  suppressed  by 
the  government  and  several  score  "Bible  Students"  are 
landed  in  jail  for  sedition. 

Koreshanity 

Such  are  the  beliefs  built  on  the  Bible.  But  there  are 
other  ancient  writings  with  strange  nomenclature  and 
ritual  and  symbolism,  calculated  to  impress  the  unlet 
tered;  also  our  prophets  have  imaginations  of  their 
own,  and  can  invent  nomenclature  and  ritual  and  sym 
bolism  never  seen  in  heaven  nor  on  earth  before.  Thus 
there  is  Dr.  Newo  Newi  New,  who  called  himself  "Arch 
bishop  of  the  Newthot  Church,"  and  gathered  about 
him  a  harem  of  devoted  females  in  San  Francisco,  and 
was  landed  in  jail  for  using  the  mails  to  defraud.  Or 
there  is  "Oahspe,  the  Cosmic  Bible,"  a  work  of  brand- 
new  revelation  with  a  brand-new  view  of  the  universe 
and  all  things  therein : 

The  reader  soon  discovers  that  he  must  radically  revise  not 
only  his  ideas  of  celestial  Cosmogony,  but  the  order  and  sig 
nificance  of  names  and  titles  commonly  applied  to  the  Trans 
cendental  Brethren.  The  great  provinces  of  Etheria  are  presided 
over  by  chiefs,  chosen  for  their  superior  development  in  wisdom 
and  love.  For  our  solar  system  to  cross  one  of  these  provinces 
requires  about  3,000  years,  and  between  them  are  belts  of  high 
Etherian  light  which  take  several  years  to  pass  over.  The  pass 
age  of  each  province  is  a  cycle  of  earthly  history,  and  the 
crossings  are  called  Dawns  of  Dan. 

And  here  is  Koreshanity,  a  revelation  vouchsafed  by 
the  Lord  to  Dr.  C.  R.  Teed  of  Chicago  in  the  year  1889. 
This  new  seer  took  the  name  of  Koresh,  which  is  He 
brew  for  Cyrus,  "the  Shepherd  from  Joseph,  the  Stone 
of  Israel,  the  Sun-Man ;  the  illuminating  center  of  the 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  249 

Son  of  man",  and  went  out  on  the  streets  of  the  city  to 
preach  that  the  earth  is  a  hollow  sphere  with  the  stars 
inside.  The  street  urchins  of  the  pork-packing  metrop 
olis  threw  stones  at  him,  and  the  irreverent  newspapers 
took  up  his  adventures,  with  the  result  that  followers 
gathered,  and  now  there  is  a  flourishing  colony  in  Flor 
ida,  with  a  dignified  magazine  called  "The  Flaming 
Sword",  and  a  collection  of  propaganda  volumes :  "The 
Cellular  Cosmogony,  an  Exposition  of  Koreshan  Uni- 
versology  and  the  New  Geodesy" ;  "The  Immortal  Man 
hood,  the  Laws  and  Processes  of  its  Attainment  in  the 
Flesh";  "The  Great  Ked  Dragon,  by  Lord  Chester"; 
"The  Coming  of  the  Shepherd  from  Joseph,  The  Stand 
ing  of  the  Great  Ensign,  by  Koresh."  The  "Religio-sci- 
ence"  of  this  Chicago  revelator  is  based,  first  upon  some 
precise  measurements  of  the  earth  which  prove  that 
its  surface  is  concave ;  and  second  upon  some  philolog 
ical  discoveries  very  much  resembling  puns.  Thus  the 
"cross  of  Christ"  is  explained  in  a  sense  of  the  word 
more  common  among  horse-breeders  than  among 
theologians : 

The  highest  characteristic  of  the  alchemical  law  is  the  cross 
of  Christ  with  sensual  man.  The  cross  means  that  the  Lord  God, 
in  order  to  perpetuate  his  own  being,  descends  into  the  race  of 
sensuality. 

And  again,  when  someone  asks  about  meteors : 

The  word  Heaven  means  things  heaved  up,  that  is,  heaved 
up  from  their  material  basis,  the  earth;  thus,  the  meteors  which 
fall  to  the  earth  are  composed  of  metallic,  mineral,  and  geolog 
ical  substances,  being  materialized  or  actually  created  in  the 
atmosphere  by  an  alchemico-organic  process  from  zones  or  belts 
periodically  open,  which  precipitate  their  contents  in  the  form 
or  shape  of  meteors." 


250  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

And  perhaps  I  ought  also  to  quote  the  "Indicia  of 
Human  Progress",  by  "Berthaldine,  Matrona".  I  don't 
know  what  a  "Matrona"  is — unless  it  is  a  female  mat 
ron.  This  female  matron  tells  me  that  now  is  the  "Time 
of  Restitution",  and  explains  that  "the  prolification  of 
the  human  race  has  reached  a  fruition  of  the  adultery 
of  the  truth  and  good  of  the  Lord  with  the  fallacies  and 

evils  of  the  mortal  hells" We  have  come,  it  seems, 

to  the  "age  of  Pisces",  which  is  "one  of  the  greatest 
radical  prolification";  and  what  we  now  need  is  the 
"power  of  polarization",  so  that  we  may  join  the  "White 
Horse  Army  of  the  Most  High",  which  is  the  organiza 
tion  of  the  "Aquarian  age",  proclaimed  by  Koresh  on 
January  15th,  1891. 

Mazdaznan 

And  here  is  another  and  even  more  startling  revela 
tion  from  Chicago,  given  to  a  seer  by  the  name  of  Dr. 
Otoman  Prince  of  Adusht  Ha'nish,  prophet  of  the  Sun 
God,  Prince  of  Peace,  Manthra  Magi  of  Temple  El  Kat- 
man,  Kalantar  of  Zoroastrian  Breathing  and  Envoy  of 
Mazdaznan  living,  Viceroy-Elect  and  International 
Head  of  Master-Thot.  If  you  had  happened  to  live  near 
the  town  of  Mendota,  Illinois,  and  had  known  the  Ger 
man  grocer-boy  named  Otto  Hanisch,  you  might  at 
first  have  trouble  in  recognizing  him  through  this 
transmogrification.  I  have  traced  his  career  in  the  files 
of  the  Chicago  newspapers,  and  find  him  herding  sheep, 
setting  type,  preaching  prestidigitation,  mesmerism, 
and  fake  spiritualism,  joining  the  Mormon  Church,  then 
the  "Christian  Catholic  Church  in  Zion",  and  then  the 
cult  of  Brighouse,  who  claimed  to  be  Christ  returned. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  251 

Finally  he  sets  himself  up  in  Chicago  as  a  Persian 
Magus,  teaching  Yogi  breathing  exercises  and  occult  sex- 
lore  to  the  elegant  society  ladies  of  the  pork-packing 
metropolis.  The  Sun  God,  worshipped  for  two  score 
centuries  in  India,  Egypt,  Greece  and  Rome,  has  a  new 
shrine  on  Lake  Park  Avenue,  and  the  prophet  gives  tea- 
parties  at  which  his  disciples  are  fed  on  lilac-blossoms — 
"the  white  and  pinkish  for  males,  the  blue-tinted  for  fe 
males".  He  wears  a  long  flowing  robe  of  pale  grey 
cashmere,  faced  with  white,  and  flexible  white  kid 
shoes,  and  he  sells  his  lady  adorers  a  book  called  "Inner 
Studies",  price  five  dollars  per  volume,  with  information 
on  such  subjects  as: 

The  Immaculate  Conception  and  its  Repetition;  The  Secrets 
of  Lovers  Unveiled;  Our  Ideals  and  Soul  Mates;  Magnetic  At 
traction  and  Electric  Mating. 

A  Grand  Jury  intervenes,  and  the  Prophet  goes  to 
jail  for  six  months ;  but  that  does  not  harm  his  cult, 
which  now  has  a  temple  in  Chicago,  presided  over  by  a 
lady  called  Kalantress  and  Evangelist;  also  a  "North 
ern  Stronghold"  in  Montreal,  an  "Embassy"  in  Lon 
don,  an  "International  Aryana"  in  Switzerland,  and 
"Centers"  all  over  America.  At  the  moment  of  going 
to  press,  the  prophet  himself  is  in  flight,  pursued  by  a 
warrant  charging  him  with  improper  conduct  with  a 
number  of  young  boys  in  a  Los  Angeles  hotel. 

I  have  dipped  into  Ha'nish's  revelations,  which  are 
a  farrago  of  every  kind  of  ancient  mysticism — paper 
and  binding  from  the  Bible,  illustrations  from  the 
Egyptian,  names  from  the  Zoroastrian,  health  rules 
from  the  Hindoos,  laws  from  the  Confucians — price 
ten  dollars  per  volume.  Would  you  like  to  discover  your 


252  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

seventeen  senses,  to  develop  them  according  to  the  Ga- 
Llama  principle,  and  to  share  the  "expansion  of  the 
magnetic  circles"  ?  Here  is  the  way  to  do  it : 

Inhale  through  nostrils  for  four  seconds,  and  upon  one  ex 
halation,  speak  slowly: 

Open,  0  thou  world-sustaining  Sun,  the  entrance  unto  Truth 
hidden  by  the  vase  of  dazzling  light. 

Again  inhale  for  four  seconds,  and  breathe  out  the  following 
sentence  upon  one  exhalation  as  before: 

Soften  the  radiation  of  Thy  Illuminating  Splendor,  that  I 
may  behold  Thy  True  Being. 

I  have  a  clipping  from  a  Los  Angeles  newspaper 
telling  of  the  prophet's  arriving  there.  He  takes  the 
front  page  with  the  captivating  headline:  "Women 
Didn't  Think  Till  They  Put  On  Corsets".  The  interview 
tells  about  his  mysteriousness,  his  aloofness,  his  bird- 
like-diet,  and  his  personal  beauty.  "Despite  his  seventy- 
three  years,  Ha'nish  evidences  no  sign  of  age.  His  keen 
blue  eyes  showed  no  sign  of  wavering.  There  were  no 
wrinkles  on  his  face,  and  his  walk  was  that  of  a  man  of 
forty."  The  humor  of  this  becomes  apparent  when  we 
mention  that  at  Ha'nish's  trial,  three  or  four  years  ago, 
he  was  proven  to  be  thirty-five  years  old ! 

Being  thus  warned  as  to  the  accuracy  of  American 
journalism,  we  shall  not  be  taken  in  by  the  repeated 
statements  that  the  Mazdaznan  prophet  is  a  millionaire. 
But  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  is  wealthy;  and  as  all 
Americans  wish  to  be  wealthy,  I  will  quote  his  formula 
of  prosperity,  his  method  of  accomplishing  what  might 
be  called  the  Individual  Revolution : 

When  hungry  and  you  do  not  know  where  to  get  your  next 
piece  of  bread,  do  not  despair.  Thy  Father,  all-loving,  has  pro 
vided  you  with  everything  that  will  meet  all  cases  of  emergency. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  253 

Place  your  teeth  tightly  together,  with  tongue  pressing  against 
the  lower  teeth  and  lips  parted.  Breathe  in,  close  lips  immedi 
ately,  exhaling  through  the  nostrils.  Breathe  again;  if  saliva 
forms  in  your  mouth,  hold  your  breath  so  you  can  swallow  it  first 
before  you  exhale.  You  thus  take  out  of  the  air  the  metal-sub 
stance  contained  therein;  you  can  even  taste  the  iron  which  you 
convert  into  substance  required  for  making  the  blood.  Should 
you  feel  that,  although  you  have  sufficient  iron  in  the  blood,  there 
is  a  lack  of  copper  and  zinc  and  silver,  place  upper  teeth  over 
lower,  keep  lower  lip  tightly  to  lower  teeth,  now  breathe  and 
you  can  even  taste  the  metals  named.  Then  should  you  feel  you 
need  more  gold  element  for  your  brain  functions,  place  your  back 
teeth  together  just  as  if  you  were  to  grind  the  back  teeth,  taking 
short  breaths  only.  You  will  then  learn  to  know  that  there  is 
gold  and  silver  all  around  us.  That  our  bodies  are  filled  with 
quite  a  quantity  of  gold. 

Black  Magic 

What  all  this  means  is  that  we  have  a  continent, 
with  a  hundred  million  half -educated  people,  materially 
prosperous,  but  spiritually  starving;  so  any  man  who 
possesses  personality,  who  looks  in  any  way  strange 
and  impressive,  or  has  hunted  up  old  books  in  a  library, 
and  can  pronounce  mysterious  words  in  a  thrilling  voice 
— such  a  man  can  find  followers.  Anybody  can  do  it 
with  any  doctrine,  from  anywhere,  Persia  or  Pata 
gonia,  Pekin  or  Pompei.  I  would  be  willing  to  wager 
that  if  I  cared  to  come  out  and  announce  that  I  had  had 
a  visit  from  God  last  night,  and  to  devote  such  literary 
and  emotional  power  as  I  possess  to  communicating  a 
new  revelation,  I  could  have  a  temple,  a  university,  and 
a  million  dollars  within  five  years  at  the  outside.  And 
if  at  the  end  of  five  years  I  were  to  announce  that  I 
had  played  a  joke  on  the  world,  some  one  of  my  follow 
ers  would  convince  the  faithful  that  I  had  been  an 


254  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

agent  of  God  without  knowing  it,  and  that  the  leader 
ship  had  now  been  turned  over  to  him. 

I  would  not  be  understood  as  believing  that  all  our 
cults  are  undiluted  fakery,  for  that  would  be  doing  in 
justice  to  some  earnest  people.  There  are,  in  this  coun 
try,  many  followers  of  the  Persian  reformer,  Abbas 
Effendi,  who  call  themselves  Babists,  and  who  have 
what  I  am  inclined  to  think  is  the  purest  and  most  dig 
nified  religion  in  existence.  There  was  a  man  named 
Jacob  Beilhardt,  who  founded  a  cult  in  Illinois  with  the 
painful  name  of  "Spirit  Fruit  Colony",  who  neverthe 
less  was  a  man  of  spiritual  insight,  a  true  mystic ;  he 
was  honest,  and  so  he  failed,  and  died  of  a  broken  heart. 
Also  there  are  the  Christian  Scientists  and  the  Theoso- 
phists,  so  exasperating  that  one  would  like  to  throw 
them  onto  the  rubbish-heap,  who  yet  compel  us  to  sift 
over  their  mountains  of  chaff  for  the  grains  of  truth 
which  will  bear  fruit  in  future. 

While  we  western  races  have  been  exploring  the 
natural  world  and  perfecting  the  mechanical  arts,  the 
Hindoo  students  have  been  exploring  the  subconscious 
and  its  strange  powers.  What  Myers  and  Lodge  and 
Janet  and  Charcot  and  Freud  and  Jung  are  telling  us 
today  they  had  hints  of  a  long  time  ago ;  and  doubtless 
they  have  hints  of  other  things,  upon  which  our  sci 
entists  have  not  yet  come.  I  have  friends,  perfectly 
sane  and  competent  people,  who  tell  me  that  they  can 
.see  auras,  and  use  this  ability  as  a  means  of  judging 
character.  Shall  I  say  that  there  are  no  auras,  simply 
because  I  do  not  happen  to  have  this  gift  of  seeing 
them  ?  In  the  same  way,  having  read  Gurney's  "Phan 
tasms  of  the  Living,"  I  am  not  ready  to  ridicule  the 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  255 

claim  of  the  Yogi  adepts,  that  they  are  able  to  project 
some  kind  of  astral  body,  and  to  communicate  with  one 
another  from  distant  places.  But  granting  such  occult 
powers  in  a  world  of  economic  strife,  what  follows? 
Simply  new  floods  of  charlatanism,  elaborate  and  com 
plicated  systems  of  ritual  and  metaphysic  for  the  de 
luding  and  plundering  of  the  credulous. 

I  have  seen  the  thing  work'ng  itse.r  out  in  one  case 
known  to  me.  A  young  man  liad  a  gii!:  oi  mental  heal 
ing  ;  I  know,  because  i  saw  it  work ;  but  it  did  not  always 
work,  and  that  was  annoying.  He  was  penniless  and 
had  a  taste  for  power,  rad  to  eke  out  his  erratic  en 
dowment  he  got  himse^r  books  -  x  Eastern  lore,  and  day 
by  day  as  i  watched  him  1  cou 0-  see  iulm  becoming  more 
and  more  impressive,  mysterious  and  forbidding.  To 
day  he  is  a  full-fledged  wonder-worker,  with  the  lan 
guage  oi  a  dozen  mystic  cults  at  his  tongue's  end,  and 
the  reverent  regard  of  many  wealthy  ladies.  I  have 
never  tried  to  break  through  his  guard,  but  I  feel  cer 
tain  that  he  is  a  deliberate  charlatan. 

This  is  an  economic  process,  automatic  and  irresist 
ible.  Just  as  the  manufacturer  of  honest  foods  is  driv 
en  out  by  the  adulterator,  so  the  worker  of  miracles 
drives  out  the  sincere  investigator.  As  a  result  we  have 
here  in  America  a  plague  of  Eastern  cults,  with 
"swamis"  using  soft  yellow  robes  and  soft  brown  eyes 
to  win  the  souls  of  idle  society  ladies.  These  teachers  of 
ancient  Hindoo  lore  despise  us  as  a  race  of  barbarians ; 
but  they  stay — whether  because  of  love  of  man  or 
woman,  I  do  not  pretend  to  say. 

There  are  the  Theosophists  of  many  brands,  with 
schools  and  institutes  and  temples  and  colonies,  and  a 


256  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

doctrine  as  complex  and  detailed  and  fantastic  as  that 
of  the  Roman  Catholics.  I  have  already  referred  to  the 
writings  of  Madame  Blavatsky,  a  runaway  Russian 
army  officer's  daughter,  whose  career  reads  like  a  tale 
out  of  the  Arabian  Nights.  And  there  is  Annie  Besant, 
who  was  once  an  ardent  worker  in  the  Social-demo 
cratic  Federation ;  H.  M.  Hyndman  tells  of  his  dismay 
when  she  went  to  India  and  walked  in  a  procession  be 
tween  two  white  bulls!  Here  in  California  is  Madame 
Tingley,  with  a  colony  and  a  host  of  followers  in  a  min- 
ature  paradise.  Men  work  at  money-lending  or  manu 
facturing  sporting-goods,  and  when  they  get  old  and 
tired  they  make  the  thrilling  discovery  that  they  have 
souls;  the  theosophists  cultivate  these  souls  and  they 
leave  their  money  to  the  soul-cause,  and  there  are  law 
suits  and  exposes  in  the  newspapers.  For,  you  see, 
there  is  ferocious  rivalry  in  the  game  of  cultivating  mil 
lionaire  souls ;  there  are  slanders  and  feuds,  just  as  in 
soulless  affairs.  "Don't  have  anything  to  do  with 
Madame  Tingley,"  whispers  a  Theosophist  lady  to  my 
wife ;  and  when  my  wife  in  all  innocence  inquires,  "Why 
not?"  the  awe-stricken  answer  comes,  "She  practices 
black  magic  I" 

Let  me  add  that  I  do  not  say  that  she  practices  black 
magic.  I  do  not  believe  that  she  could  practice  it,  even 
if  she  wanted  to — I  do  not  believe  in  black  magic.  My 
purpose  is  merely  to  show  how  theosophists  quarrel: 
going  back  to  the  days  of  Anu  and  Baal  and  the  bronze 
image  of  the  Babylonian  fire-god : 

Let  them  die,  but  let  me  live! 

Let  them  be  put  under  a  ban,  but  let  me  prosper! 

Let  them  perish,  but  let  me  increase! 

Let  them  become  weak,  but  let  me  wax  strong! 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  257 

Mental  Malpractice 

This  is  the  other  side  of  the  fair  shield  of  religious 
faith.  Why,  if  there  be  a  power  which  loves  and  can 
be  persuaded  to  aid  us,  may  there  not  also  be  a  power 
which  hates,  and  can  be  persuaded  to  destroy  ?  No  re 
ligion  has  ever  been  able  to  answer  this,  and  therefore 
none  has  ever  been  able  to  escape  from  devil-terrors. 
Even  Jesus  was  pursued  by  Satan,  and  the  Holy  Cath 
olic  Church  has  its  ceremonies  for  the  exorcising  of 
demons,  and  a  most  frightful  formula  for  cursing.  And 
here  are  our  friends  the  Christian  Scientists,  proclaim 
ing  the  unreality  of  all  evil,  their  ability  to  banish  dis 
ease  by  convincing  themselves  that  they  are  perfect  in 
God — yet  tormented  by  a  squalid  phobia  called  "Mental 
Malpractice",  or  "Malicious  Animal  Magnetism". 

Christian  Science  is  the  most  characteristic  of 
American  religious  contributions.  Just  as  Billy  Sunday 
is  the  price  we  pay  for  failing  to  educate  our  base-ball 
players,  so  Mary  Baker  Glover  Patterson  Eddy  is  the 
price  we  pay  for  failing  to  educate  our  farmer's  daugh 
ters. 

That  she  had  a  power  to  cure  disease  I  do  not  doubt, 
because  I  have  a  little  of  it  myself.  At  first  my  opin 
ion  was  that  her  "Science"  made  its  way  by 
curing  the  imaginary  ailments  of  the  idle  rich.  If  a 
person  has  nothing  to  do  but  think  that  he  is  sick,  you 
can  work  easy  miracles  by  persuading  him  to  think  that 
he  is  well ;  and  if  he  has  nothing  to  do  but  think  that  he 
is  well,  he  will  help  you  to  build  marble  churches  and 
maintain  propaganda  societies.  But  recently  I  have  ex 
perimented  with  mental  healing — enough  to  satisfy 
myself  that  the  subconscious  mind  which  controls  our 

17 


258  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

physical  functions  can  be  powerfully  influenced  by  the 
will. 

I  told  the  story  oJ  some  of  these  experiments  in 
Hearst's  Magazine  for  April,  1914.  Suffice  it  here  to 
say  that  if  you  will  lay  your  hands  upon  a  sick  person, 
forming  a  vivid  mental  picture  of  the  bodily  changes 
you  desire,  and  concentrating  the  power  of  your  will 
upon  them,  you  may  be  surprised  by  the  results,  es 
pecially  if  you  possess  anything  in  the  way  of  psychic 
gifts.  You  do  not  have  to  adopt  any  theories,  you  do 
not  have  to  do  it  in  the  name  of  any  divinity,  ancient 
or  modern ;  the  only  bearing  of  such  ideas  is  that  they 
serve  to  persuade  people  to  make  the  experiment,  and 
to  make  it  with  persistence  and  intensity.  So  it  has 
come  about  that  "miracles"  of  healing  are  associated 
with  "faith" ;  and  so  it  comes  about  that  scientists  are 
apt  to  flout  the  subject.  But  read  of  the  work  of  Janet 
and  Charcot  and  their  followers  at  the  Salpetriere ;  they 
have  proven  that  all  kinds  of  seeming-organic  ailments 
may  be  entirely  hysterical  in  nature,  and  may  be  cured 
by  the  simplest  form  of  suggestion.  Understanding 
this,  you  may  find  it  more  easy  to  credit  the  fact  that 
cripples  do  sometimes  throw  away  their  crutches  in  the 
grotto  of  Lourdes.  For  my  part,  I  can  believe  that  Jesus 
performed  all  the  miracles  of  healing  attributed  to  him 
— including  the  raising  up  of  people  pronounced  to  be 
dead  by  the  ignorance  of  that  time.  I  am  convinced  that 
in  the  new  science  of  psycho-analysis  we  have  a  uni 
verse  as  vast  as  the  universe  of  the  atom  or  of  the 
stars. 

The  Christian  Scientists  have  got  hold  of  this  pow 
er  ;  they  have  mixed  it  up  with  metaphysic  and  divin- 


THE  PKOFITS  or  RELIGION*  259 

ity,  and  built  some  four  or  five  hundred  churches,  and 
printed  the  Mother  Church  alone  knows  how  many  mil 
lion  pamphlets  and  books.  I  once  invested  three  of 
my  hard-earned  dollars  for  a  copy  of  the  Eddy  Bible, 
and  let  myself  be  stunned  and  blinded  by  the  flapping 
of  metaphysical  wings.  With  the  passing  of  the  years 
I  have  come  to  understand  the  use  of  mystical  words  as 
a  form  of  suggestion,  often  highly  potent.  But  what 
interests  us  in  this  Book  is  not  the  technique  of  mental 
healing,  but  the  use  of  this,  and  all  other  secrets  of  life, 
for  the  buttressing  of  privilege.  Christian  Science  is 
a  Yankee  religion,  and  practical;  it  will  remove  your 
wen,  nail  down  your  floating  kidney,  and  enable  you  to 
hustle  and  make  money.  We  saw  in  our  politics  the 
growth  of  a  Party  of  the  Full  Dinner-Pail;  contempor 
aneous  therewith,  and  corresponding  thereto,  we  see  in 
our  religious  life  the  development  of  a  Church  of  the 
Full  Pocket-Book. 

The  rank  and  file  of  practitioners  are  sincere,  hard 
working  devotees ;  but  they  are  controlled  by  big  busi 
ness  men  in  Boston.  This  church  machine  does  not  issue 
cheap  editions  of  "Science  and  Health,  With  Key  to  the 
Scriptures",  to  relieve  the  suffering  of  the  proletariat ; 
no — the  work  is  copyrighted,  in  all  its  varying  and  con 
tradictory  editions,  and  the  price  is  from  three  to  seven- 
fifty,  according  to  binding.  The  poor  use  the  churches, 
but  the  rich  run  them.  And  we  have  no  nonsense  about 
charity,  we  don't  worry  about  the  poor  who  fester  in 
our  city  slums ;  because  poverty  is  a  product  of  Mortal 
Mind,  and  we  offer  to  all  men  a  way  to  get  rich.  You  may 
come  to  our  marble  churches  and  hear  people  testify 


260  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

how  through  the  power  of  Divine  Mind  they  were  en 
abled  to  anticipate  a  rise  in  the  stock-market.  If  you 
don't  avail  yourself  of  the  opportunity,  the  fault  is 
yours,  and  yours  also  the  punishment. 

As  to  the  management  of  the  Church,  the  Roman 
Catholic  hierarchy  is  a  Bolshevik  democracy  in  compar 
ison.  The  Church  is  controlled  by  an  absolutely  irre 
sponsible  self -perpetuating  body  of  five  men,  who  alone 
dictate  its  policy.  I  have  in  my  hand  a  letter  from  a 
Christian  Science  healer  who  was  listed  as  an  "author 
ized  practitioner",  and  who  withdrew  from  the  Church 
because  of  its  attitude  on  public  questions.  He  sends  me 
a  copy  of  his  correspondence  with  the  editors  of  the 
"Christian  Science  Monitor",  containing  a  detailed  an 
alysis  of  the  position  of  that  paper  on  such  issues  as  the 
Ballinger  land-frauds.  He  writes : 

I  am  thoroughly  convinced  now  that  the  policy  of  the  Church 
is  consciously  plutocratic.  The  only  recommendation  I  have 
heard  of  the  latest  appointee  to  the  Board  of  Directors  is  that  he 
is  one  of  the  richest  men  in  the  movement. 

After  the  Titanic  disaster,  Senator  La  Follette 
brought  in  a  carefully  drawn  bill  to  compel  steamship 
companies  to  provide  life-boats  and  trained  crews.  The 
"Christian  Science  Monitor"  opposed  this  bill;  and 
when  my  correspondent  cited  the  fact,  he  brought  out 
a  quaint  bit  of  metaphysical  logic,  as  follows : 

One  would  prefer  to  travel  on  a  vessel  without  a  single 
boat,  rather  than  on  some  other  vessels  which  were  loaded  down 
with  life-boats,  where  the  government  of  Mind  was  not  under 
stood; 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  261 

Science  and  Wealth 

The  truth  is  that  the  brand  of  Mammon  was  on  our 
Yankee  religion  from  the  day  of  its  birth.  In  the  first 
edition  of  her  new  Bible  "Mother"  Eddy  dropped  the 
hint  to  her  readers :  "Men  of  business  have  said  this 
science  was  of  great  advantage  from  a  secular  point  of 
view."  And  in  her  advertisements  she  threw  aside  all 
pretense,  declaring  that  her  work  "Affords  an  oppor 
tunity  to  acquire  a  profession  by  which  one  can  ac 
cumulate  a  fortune."  When  her  pupils  did  accumulate, 
she  boasted  of  their  success;  nor  did  she  neglect  her 
own  accumulating. 

It  has  been  a  dozen  years  since  I  looked  into  this 
cult;  in  order  to  be  sure  that  it  has  not  been  purified 
in  the  interim,  I  proceed  to  a  street  corner  in  my  home 
city,  where  is  a  stand  with  a  sign:  "Christian  Science 
Literature."  I  take  four  sample  copies  of  a  magazine, 
the  "Christian  Science  Sentinel",  published  by  the 
Mother  Church  in  Boston,  and  turn  to  the  "Testimoni 
als  of  Healing".  In  the  issue  of  August  11, 1917,  Mary 
C.  Kichards  of  St.  Margarets-on-Thames,  England,  tes 
tifies:  "Through  a  number  of  circumstances  unneces 
sary  to  relate,  but  proving  conclusively  that  the  result 
came  not  from  man  but  from  God,  employment  was 
found."  In  the  issue  of  December  2,  1916,  Frances  Tut- 
tle  of  Jersey  City,  N.  J.,  testifies  how  her  sister  was  suc 
cessfully  treated  for  unemployment  by  a  scientist 
practitioner.  "Every  condition  was  beautifully  met." 
In  the  same  issue  Fred  D.  Miller  of  Los  Angeles,  Cal., 
testifies :  "Soon  after  this  wonderful  truth  came  to  me, 
Divine  Love  led  me  to  a  new  position  with  a  responsible 
firm.  The  work  was  new  to  me,  but  I  have  given  entire 


262  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGIOX 

satisfaction,  and  my  salary  has  been  advanced  twice  in 
less  than  a  year."  In  the  issue  of  January  27,  1917, 
Eliza  Fryant  of  Agricola,  Miss.,  testifies  how  she  cured 
her  little  dog  of  snake-bite  and  removed  two  painful 
corns  from  her  own  foot.  In  the  issue  of  August  4, 
1917,  Marcia  E.  Gaier,  of  Everett,  Wash.,  testifies  how 
it  suddenly  occurred  to  her  that  because  God  is  All, 
she  would  drop  her  planning  and  outlining  in  regard  to 
real  estate  properties,  "upon  which  for  nine  months  all 
available  material  methods  were  tried  to  no  effect." 
The  result  was  a  triumph  of  "Principle". 

While  working  in  the  yard  one  morning  and  gratefully  com 
muning  with  God,  the  only  power,  1  suddenly  felt  that  I  should 
stop  working  and  prepare  for  visitors  on  their  way  to  look  at 
the  property.  I  obeyed  this  very  distinct  command,  and  in  about 
an  hour  I  greeted  two  people  who  had  searched  almost  the  en 
tire  city  for  just  what  we  had  to  offer.  They  had  been  directed 
to  our  place  by  what  to  material  sense  would  seem  an  accident, 
but  we  know  it  was  the  divine  law  of  harmony  in  its  universal 
operation. 

After  this  no  one  will  wonder  that  John  M.  Tutt,  in 
a  Christian  Science  lecture  at  Kansas  City,  Mo.,  should 
proclaim : 

My  friends,  do  you  know  that  since  the  world  began  Chris 
tian  Science  is  the  only  system  which  has  intelligently  related 
religion  to  business  ?  Christian  Science  shows  that  since  all  ideas: 
belong  to  Mind,  God,  therefore  all  real  business  belongs  to  Him. 

As  I  said,  these  people  have  the  new-old  power  of 
mental  healing.  They  blunder  along  with  it  blindly, 
absurdly,  sometimes  with  tragic  consequences;  but 
meantime  the  rank  and  file  of  the  pill-doctors  know 
nothing  about  this  power,  and  regard  it  with  contempt 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  263 

mingled  with  fear;  so  of  course  the  hosts  of  sufferers 
whom  the  pill-doctors  cannot  help  flock  to  the  healers 
of  the  "Church  of  Christ,  Scientist".  According  to  the 
custom  of  those  who  are  healed  by  "faith",  they  swal 
low  line,  hook,  and  sinker,  creed,  ritual,  metaphysic 
and  divinity.  So  we  see  in  twentieth-century  America 
precisely  what  we  saw  in  B.  C.  twentieth-century  As 
syria — a  host  of  worshippers,  giving  their  worldly 
goods  without  stint,  and  a  priesthood,  made  partly  of 
fanatics  and  partly  of  charlatans,  conducting  a  vast 
enterprise  of  graft,  and  harvesting  that  thing  desired 
of  all  men,  power  ovei  the  lives  and  destinies  of  others. 

And  of  course  among  themselves  they  quarrel ;  Ihey 
murder  one  another's  Mortal  Minds,  they  drive  one  an 
other  out,  they  snarl  over  the  spoils  like  a  pack  of 
hungry  animals.  Listen  to  the  Mother,  denouncing  one 
of  her  students — a  perfectly  amiable  and  harmless 
youth  whose  only  oif  ense  was  that  he  had  gone  his  own 
way  and  was  healing  the  sick  for  the  benefit  of  his  own 
pocket-book : 

Behold!  thou  criminal  mental  marauder,  that  would  blot  out 
the  sunshine  of  earth,  that  would  sever  friends,  destroy  virtue, 
put  out  Truth,  and  murder  in  secret  the  innocent,  befouling  thy 
track  with  the  trophies  of  thy  guilt — I  say,  Behold  the  "cloud" 
no  bigger  than  a  man's  hand  already  rising  on  the  horizon  of 
Truth,  to  pour  down  upon  thy  guilty  head  the  hailstones  of  doom. 

And  again : 

The  Nero  of  today,  regaling  himself  through  a  mental  meth 
od  with  the  torture  of  individuals,  is  repeating  history,  and  will 
fall  upon  his  own  sword,  and  it  shall  pierce  him  through.  Let 
him  remember  this  when,  in  the  dark  recesses  of  thought,  he  is 
robbing,  committing  adultery  and  killing.  When  he  is  attempt- 


264  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

ing  to  turn  friend  away  from  friend,  ruthlessly  stabbing  the 
quivering  heart;  when  he  is  clipping  the  thread  of  life  and  giving 
to  the  grave  youth  and  its  rainbow  hues;  when  he  is  turning 
back  the  reviving  sufferer  to  his  bed  of  pain,  clouding  his  first 
morning  after  years  of  night;  and  the  Nemesis  of  that  hour 
shall  point  to  the  tyrant's  fate,  who  falls  at  length  upon  the 
sword  of  justice. 

New  Nonsense 

In  a  certain  city  of  America  is  a  large  building  given 
up  entirely  to  the  whims  of  pretty  ladies.  Its  floors  are 
not  floors  but  "Promenades",  and  have  walls  of  glass, 
behind  which,  as  you  stroll,  you  see  bonnets  from  Paris 
and  opera  cloaks  from  London,  furs  from  Alaska  and 
blankets  from  Arizona,  diamonds  from  South  Africa 
and  beads  from  the  Philippines,  grapes  from  Spain  and 
cherries  from  Japan,  fortune-tellers  from  Arabia  and 
dancing-masters  from  Petrograd  and  "naturopaths" 
from  Vienna.  There  are  seventy-three  shops,  by  actual 
count,  containing  everything  that  could  be  imagined 
or  desired  by  a  pretty  lady,  whether  for  her  body,  or 
for  that  vague  stream  of  emotion  she  calls  her  "soul". 
One  of  the  seventy-three  shops  is  a  "Metaphysical  Li 
brary",  having  broad  windows,  and  walls  in  pastel  tints, 
and  pretty  vases  with  pink  flowers,  and  pretty  gray 
wicker  chairs  in  which  the  reader  will  please  to  be 
seated,  while  we  probe  the  mysteries  of  an  activity 
widely  spread  throughout  America,  called  "New 
Thought." 

We  begin  with  a  shelf  of  magazines  having  mys 
tical  titles :  Azoth ;  Master  Mind ;  Aletheian ;  Words  of 
Power;  Qabalah;  Comforter;  Adept;  Nautilus;  True 
Word ;  Astrological  Bulletin ;  Unity ;  Uplift ;  Now.  And 
then  come  shelves  of  pretty  pamphlets,  alluring  to  the 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  265 

eye  and  the  purse ;  also  shelves  of  imposing-looking  vol 
umes  containing  the  lore  and  magic  of  a  score  of  races 
and  two  score  of  centuries — together  with  the  very 
newest  manifestations  of  Yankee  hustle  and  graft. 

As  in  the  case  of  Christian  Science,  these  New 
Thoughters  have  a  fundamental  truth,  which  I  would 
by  no  means  wish  to  depreciate.  It  is  a  fact  that  the 
mysterious  Source  of  our  being  is  infinite,  and  that  we 
are  only  at  the  beginning  of  our  thinking  about  it.  It 
is  a  fact  that  by  appeal  to  it  we  can  perform  seeming 
miracles  of  mental  and  moral  regeneration;  we  can 
stimulate 'the  flow  of  nervous  energy  and  of  the  blood, 
thus  furthering  the  processes  of  bodily  healing.  But 
the  fact  that  God  is  Infinite  and  Omnipotent  does  not 
bar  the  fact  that  He  has  certain  ways  of  working, 
which  He  does  not  vary ;  and  that  it  is  our  business  to 
explore  and  understand  these  ways,  instead  of  setting 
our  fancies  to  work  imagining  other  ways  more  agree 
able  to  our  sentimentality. 

Thus,  for  example,  if  we  want  bread,  it  is  God's 
decree  that  we  shall  plant  wheat  and  harvest  it,  and 
grind  and  bake  and  distribute  it.  Under  conditions  pre 
vailing  at  the  moment,  it  appears  to  be  His  decree  that 
we  shall  store  the  wheat  in  elevators,  and  ship  it  in 
freight  cars,  and  buy  it  through  a  grain  exchange,  with 
capital  borrowed  from  a  national  bank ;  in  other  words, 
that  our  daily  bread  shall  be  the  plaything  of  exploiters 
and  speculators,  until  such  a  time  as  we  have  the  in 
telligence  to  form  an  effective  political  party  and  estab 
lish  Industrial  Democracy.  But  when  you  come  to  study 
the  ways  of  God  in  the  literature  of  the  New  Thought, 
do  you  find  anything  about  the  Millers'  Trust  and  the 


266  THE  ^PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Bakers'  Trust  and  how  to  expropriate  these  agencies  of 
starvation  ?  You  do  not ! 

What  you  find  is  Bootstrap-lifting ;  you  find  gentle 
men  and  lady  practitioners  shutting  their  eyes  and  lift 
ing  their  hands  and  pronouncing  Incantations  in  awe- 
inspiring  voices — or  in  Capital  Letters  and  LARGE 
TYPE :  "God  is  infinite,  God  is  All-Loving,  GOD  WILL 
PROVIDE.  Bread  is  coming  to  you !  Bread  is  coming 
to  you ! !  BREAD  IS  COMING  TO  YOU ! ! !" 

You  think  this  is  exaggeration  ?  If  so,  it  is  because 
you  have  never  entered  the  building  cf  the  pretty 
ladies,  and  sat  in  the  gray  wicker  chairs  of  the  meta 
physical  library.  One  of  the  highest  high-priestesses 
of  the  cults  of  New  Nonsense  is  a  lady  named  Eliza 
beth  Towne,  editor  of  "The  Nautilus";  and  Priestess 
Elizabeth  tells  you : 

I  believe  the  idea  that  money  wants  you  will  help  you  to  the 
right  mental  condition.  Be  a  pot  of  honey  and  let  it  come. 

I  look  over  this  Priestess'  magazine,  and  find  it  full 
of  testimonials  and  advertisements  for  the  conjuring 
of  prosperity.  "Are  you  in  the  success  sphere?"  asks 
one  exhorter ;  the  next  tells  you  "How  to  enter  the  si 
lence.  How  to  manifest  what  you  desire.  The  secret  of 
advancement."  Another  tells :  "How  a  Failure  at  Sixty 
Won  Sudden  Success ;  From  Poverty  to  $40,000  a  year 
— a  Lesson  for  Old  and  Young  Alike."  The  lesson,  it 
appears,  is  to  pay  $3.00  for  a  book  called  "Power  of 
Will."  And  here  is  another  book : 

Master  Key:  Which  can  unlock  the  Secret  Chamber  of  Suc 
cess,  can  throw  wide  the  doors  which  seem  to  bar  men  from  the 
Treasure  House  of  Nature,  and  bids  those  enter  and  partake 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  267 

who  are  Wise  enough  to  Understand  and  broad  enough  to  Weigh 
the  Evidence,  firm  enough  to  Follow  their  Own  Judgment  and 
Strong  enough  to  Make  the  Sacrifice  Exacted. 

"Dollars  Want  Me" 

I  turn  to  the  shelves  of  pamphlets.  Here  is  a  pretty 
one  called  "All  Sufficiency  in  All  Things,"  published  by 
the  "Unity  School  of  Christianity",  in  Kansas  City;  it 
explains  that  God  is  God,  not  merely  of  the  Soul,  but 
also  of  the  Kansas  City  stockyards. 

This  divine  Substance  is  ever  abiding  within  us,  and  stands 
ready  to  manifest  itself  in  whatever  form  you  and  I  need  or  wish, 
just  as  it  did  in  Elisha's  time.  It  is  the  same  yesterday,  today 
and  forever.  Abundant  Supply  by  the  manifestation  of  the  Fath 
er  within  us,  from  within  outward,  is  as  much  a  legitimate  out 
come  of  the  Christ  life  or  spiritual  understanding  as  is  bodily 

healing "Know  that  I  am   God— all   of  God,   Good,  all  of 

Good.  I  am  Life.  I  am  Health.  I  am  Supply.  I  am  the  Sub 
stance." 

And  here  is  W.  W.  Atkinson  of  Chicago,  author  of  a 
work  called  "Mind  Power".  Would  you  like  to  be  an 
Impressive  Personality  ?  Mr.  Atkinson  will  tell  you  ex 
actly  how  to  do  it;  he  will  give  you  the  secret  of  the 
Magnetic  Handclasp,  of  the  Intense,  Straight-in-the- 
eye  Look ;  he  will  tell  you  what  to  say,  he  will  write  out 
for  you  Incantations  which  you  may  pronounce  to  your 
self,  to  convince  yourself  that  you  have  Power,  that  the 
INDWELLING  PRESENCE  with  all  its  MIGHT  is 
yours.  Mr.  Atkinson  rebukes  mildly  the  tendency  of 
some  of  his  fellow  Bootstrap-lifters  to  employ  these 
arts  for  money-making;  but  you  notice  that  his  mag 
azine,  "Advanced  Thought",  does  not  decline  the  adver 
tisements  of  such  too-practical  practitioners. 


268  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Next  comes  a  gentleman  with  the  musical  name  of 
Wallace  Wattles,  who  tells  in  one  pamphlet  "How  to  Be 
a  Genius",  and  in  another  pamphlet  "How  to  Get  What 
you  Want".  The  thing  for  you  to  do  is — 

Saturate    your   mentality    through    and    through    with    the 

knowledge  that  YOU  CAN  DO  WHAT  YOU  WANT  TO  DO 

Look  upon  the  peanut-stand  merely  as  the  beginning  of  the  de 
partment  store,  and  make  it  grow;  you  can. 

And  Mr.  Wattles  wattles  on,  in  an  ecstasy  of  ac 
quisitiveness  : 

Hold  this  consciousness  and  say  with  deep,  earnest  feeling:  1 
CAN  succeed!  All  that  is  possible  to  any  one  is  possible  to  me. 
I  AM  success.  I  do  succeed,  for  I  am  full  of  the  Power  of  Suc 
cess. 

Imagine,  if  you  please,  a  poor  devil  chained  in  the 
treadmill  of  the  capitalist  system — a  "soda-jerker",  a 
"counter-jumper",  a  book-keeper  for  the  Steel  Trust. 
His  chances  of  rising  in  life  are  one  in  ten  thousand ; 
but  he  comes  to  the  Metaphysical  Library,  and  pays  the 
price  of  his  dinner  for  a  pamphlet  by  Henry  Harrison 
Brown,  who  was  first  a  Unitarian  clergyman,  and  then 
an  extra-high  Bootstrap-lifter  in  San  Francisco, 
an  Honorary  Vice-President  of  the  International  New 
Nonsense  Alliance.  Mr.  Brown  will  tell  our  soda-jerker 
or  counter-jumper  exactly  how  to  elevate  himself  by 
mental  machinery.  All  calculations  of  probabilities  are 
delusions  of  the  senses;  if  you  have  faith,  you  can 
move,  not  merely  mountains,  but  Riker-Hegeman's, 
Macy's,  or  the  Steel  Trust.  "How  to  Promote  Yourself" 
is  the  title  of  one  of  Mr.  Brown's  pamphlets,  in  which 
he  explains  that — 


THE  PROFITS   OF  RELIGION  269 

Your  wants  are  impressed  on  the  Divine  Mind  only  by  your 
faith.  A  doubt  cuts  the  connection. 

A  second  pamphlet,  which  we  are  told  is  now  in  its 
thirtieth  edition,  bears  the  thrilling  title  of  "Dollars 
Want  Me!"  In  it  Mr.  Brown  lays  claim  to  being  a  pio 
neer: 

I  believe  that  this  little  monograph  is  the  first  utterance  of 
the  thought  that  each  individual  has  the  ability  so  to  radiate  his 
mental  forces  that  he  can  cause  the  Dollars  to  feel  him,  love 
him,  seek  him,  and  thus  draw  at  will  all  things  needed  for  his 
unf oldment  from  the  universal  supply. 

"What  are  Dollars?"  asks  our  author;  and  answers: 

Dollars  are  manifestations  of  the  One  Infinite  Substance  as 
you  are,  but,  unlike  you,  they  are  not  Self-Conscious.  They  have 
no  power  till  you  give  them  power.  Make  them  feel  this  through 
your  thought-vibrations  as  you  feel  the  importance  of  your  work. 
They  will  then  come  to  you  to  be  used. 

"What  is  Poverty?"  Mr.  Brown  asks,  and  answers 
himself: 

Poverty  is  a  mental  condition.  It  can  be  cured  only  by  the 
Affirmation  of  Power  to  cure:  I  am  a  part  of  the  One,  and,  in 
the  One,  I  possess  all!  Affirm  this  and  patiently  wait  for  the 
manifestation.  You  have  sown  the  thought  seed. 

And  our  author  goes  on  to  hand  out  packages  of 
these  thought-seeds — "Affirmations"  as  they  are  called,, 
in  the  jargon  of  the  New  Conjuring : 

I  desire  a  deep  consciousness  of  financial  freedom. 
I  desire  that  the  flow  of  prosperity  become  equalized. 
I  desire  a  greater  consciousness  of  my  power  to  attract  the 
dollar. 

The  Indwelling  Power  cares  for  my  purse. 
I  own  whatever  I  desire. 


270  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

I  can  afford  to  use  dollars  for  my  happiness. 

I  always  have  a  good  bank  account.   I  actually  see  it. 

My  one  idea  of  the  law  is  to  use,  use,  USE. 

Spiritual  Financiering 

If  the  symbolism  of  the  Episcopal  Church  is  of  the 
palace,  and  that  of  the  non-conformist  sects  of  the 
counting-house,  that  of  the  International  New  Non 
sense  Alliance  is  of  Wall  Street  and  the  "ticker".  What 
is  your  rating  in  the  Spiritual  Bradstreet?"  asks  Wil 
liam  Morris  Nichols  in  the  publication  of  the  "  'Now' 
Folk",  San  Francisco : 

Is  it  low  or  high  ?  Is  your  credit  with  the  Bank  of  the  Uni 
verse  good  or  poor?  If  you  draw  a  spiritual  draft  are  you  sure 
of  its  being  honored? 

If  you  can  answer  that  last  question  affirmatively,  you  are 
on  the  road  to  become  a  Master  in  Spiritual  Financiering. 

Have  you  an  account  with  the  First  (and  only)  Bank  of 
Spirit  ?  If  not,  then  you  should  at  once  open  one  therewith.  For 
no  one  can  afford  to  keep  less  than  a  large  deposit  of  spiritual 
funds  with  that  Bank. 

And  how  do  you  proceed  to  open  your  account?  It 
is  very  simple : 

Intend  the  mind  in  the  direction  indicated  by  your  desire. 
Seek  for  the  Light  and  Guidance  by  which  you  may  open  up  the 
way  for  your  Spiritual  Substance,  which  governs  material  sup 
ply,  to  reach  you  and  make  you  as  rich  as  you  ought  to  be,  in 
freedom  and  happiness.  All  this  you  can,  and  when  in  earnest, 
will  do. 

I  turn  over  the  advertisements  of  this  publication 
of  the  "  'Now'  Folk".  One  offers  "The  Business  Side  of 
New  Thought."  Another  offers  "The  Books  Without 
an  If",  with  your  money  back  IF  you  are  not  satisfied ! 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  271 

Another  offers  land  in  Bolivia  for  two  dollars  an  acre. 
Another  quotes  Shakespeare:  "Tis  the  mind  that 
makes  the  body  rich."  Another  offers  two  copies  of  the 
"Phrenological  Era"  for  ten  cents. 

There  is  apparently  no  delusion  of  any  age  or  clime 
which  cannot  find  dupes  among  the  readers  of  this  New 
Nonsense.  One  notice  commands : 

Stop!  A  Revelation!  A  Book  has  been  written  entitled 
"Strands  of  Gold"  or  "From  Darkness  into  Light!" 

Another  announces: 

The  Most  Wonderful  Book  of  the  Ages:  The  Acquarian  Gos 
pel  of  Jesus  the  Christ,  Transcribed  from  the  Book  of  God's  Re- 
membrance,  the  Akashic  Records. 

And  here  is  an  advertisement  published  in  Mr.  At 
kinson's  paper : 

Numerology:  the  Universal  Adjuster!  Do  you  know:  What 
you  appear  to  be  to  others?  What  you  really  are?  What  you 
want  to  be  ?  What  would  overcome  your  present  and  future  dif 
ficulties  ?  Write  to  X,  Philosopher.  You  will  receive  full  partic 
ulars  of  his  personal  work  which  is  dedicated  to  your  service. 
No  problem  is  too  big  or  too  small  for  Numerology.  Under 
standing  awaits  you. 

And  looking  in  the  body  of  the  magazine,  you  find 
this  Philosopher  imparting  some  of  this  Understand 
ing.  Would  you  like,  for  example,  to  understand  why 
America  entered  the  War?  Nothing  easier.  The  vowels 
of  the  Words  United  States  of  America  are  uieaeoaeia, 
which  are  numbered  2951561591,  which  added  make 
45,  or  4  plus  5  equals  9.  You  might  not  at  first  see  what 
that  has  to  do  with  the  War — until  the  Philosopher 
points  out  that  "9  in  the  number  of  completion,  indicat- 


272  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

ing  the  end  of  a  cosmic  cycle."  That,  of  course,  explains 
everything. 

And  here  is  a  work  on  what  you  perhaps  thought 
to  be  a  dead  science,  Astrology.  It  is  called  "Lucky 
Hours  for  Everybody:  A  True  System  of  Planetary 
Hours*  by  Prof.  John  B.  Early.  Price  One  Dollar."  It 
teaches  you  things  like  this : 

Saturn's  negative  hours  are  especially  good  for  all  matters 

relating  to  gold-mining The  Sun  negative  rules  the  emerald, 

the  musical  note  D  sharp,  and  the  number  four.  The  lunar  hours 
are  a  good  time  to  deal  in  public  commodities,  and  to  hire  serv 
ants  of  both  sexes 

A  recent  lady  visitor  informed  me  that  she  had  made  several 
vain  attempts  to  transact  important  business  in  the  hours  ruled 
by  Jupiter,  usually  held  to  be  fortunate,  while  she  was  nearly 
always  fortunate  in  what  she  began  in  the  hours  ruled  by  Saturn. 
Upon  investigation  I  found  her  name  was  ruled  by  the  Sun  nega 
tive,  and  that  she  had  Capricorn  with  Saturn  therein  as  her 
ascendant  at  birth,  which  explains. 

And  finally,  here  is  a  London  "scientist",  reported 
in  the  "Weekly  Unity"  of  Kansas  City,  who  proves  his 
mental  power  over  two-horse  power  oil  engines  which 
fail  to  act.  "Going  a  little  apart,  he  came  back  in  a  few 
minutes  and  said :  The  engine  is  all  right  now  and  will 
work  satisfactorily/  and  without  any  further  difficulty 
it  did."  We  are  told  how  Dr.  Rawson  gave  a  demon 
stration  of  his  method  to  a  newspaper  reporter  the 
other  day.  Fixing  his  gaze  as  though  looking  into 
space,  he  apparently  became  absorbed  in  deep  content 
plation  and  said  aloud:  "There  is  no  danger;  man  is 
surrounded  by  divine  love;  there  is  no  matter;  all  is 
spirit  and  manifestation  of  spirit." 

You  might  at  first  find  difficulty  in  believing  what 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  273 

can  be  accomplished  by  "demonstrations"  such  as  this ; 
not  merely  are  two-horse  power  oil  engines  made  to 
work,  but  the  whole  gigantic  machine  of  Prussian  mil 
itarism  is  prevented  from  working.  You  may  recall  how 
Arthur  Machen's  magazine  story  of  the  Angels  of 
Mons  was  taken  up  and  made  into  a  Catholic  legend 
over-night ;  now  here  is  a  New-Nonsense  legend,  com 
plete  and  perfect,  going  the  rounds  of  our  Nonsense 
magazines : 

London,  Dec.  14. — Shell-proof  and  bullet-proof  soldiers  have 
been  discovered  on  the  European  battle-fronts.  Heroes  with 
"charmed  lives"  are  being  made  every  day,  according  to  Fred 
erick  L.  Rawson,  a  London  scientist,  who  insists  he  has  found 
the  miraculous  way  by  which  they  are  developed.  He  calls  it 
"audible  treatment".  "Practical  utilization  of  the  powers  of 
God  by  right  thinking,"  is  the  agency  through  which  Dr.  Rawson 
declares  he  can  so  treat  a  man  that  he  will  not  be  harmed  when 
hundreds  of  men  are  being  shot  dead  beside  him.  This  amazing 
treatment  includes  a  new  type  of  prayer.  It  is  being  admin 
istered  to  hundreds  of  men  audibly,  and  to  hundreds  more  by 
letter.  Nothing  since  the  war  began  has  aroused  so  much  talk  of 
modern  miracles  as  have  many  of  the  statements  of  Dr.  Raw- 
son 

At  the  taking  of  a  wood  there  were  five  hundred  yards  of 
"No  Man's  Land"  to  be  crossed.  Our  troops  could  not  get  across. 

Then  Capt.  ,  who  practices  this  method  of  prayer, 

treated  them  for  an  hour  before  they  started,  and  not  a  man  was 
knocked  out.  He  was  the  only  officer  left  out  of  eighty  in  his 
brigade.  He  simply  held  onto  the  fact  that  man  is  spiritual  and 
perfect  and  could  not  be  touched.  A  bullet  fired  from  a  revolver 
only  five  yards  away  hit  him  over  the  chest,  tore  his  shirt  and 
went  out  at  the  shoulder.  But  it  never  penetrated  his  chest.  He 
was  frequently  in  a  hail  of  shells  and  bullets  which  did  not  touch 
him. 

The  Graft  of  Grace 

All  this  is  grotesque ;  but  it  is  what  happens  to  re 
in 


274  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

ligions  in  a  world  of  commercial  competition.  It  hap 
pens  not  merely  to  Christian  Science  and  New  Thought 
religions,  Mazdaznan  and  Zionist,  Holy  Roller  and  Mor 
mon  religions,  but  to  Catholic  and  Episcopalian,  Pres 
byterian  and  Methodist  and  Baptist  religions.  For  you 
see,  when  you  are  with  the  wolves  you  must  howl  with 
them;  when  you  are  competing  with  fakirs  you  must 
fake.  The  ordinary  Christian  will  read  the  claims  of 
the  New  Thought  fakers  with  contempt ;  but  have  I  not 
shown  the  Catholic  Church  publishing  long  lists  of 
money-miracles  ?  Have  I  not  shown  the  Church  of  Good 
Society,  our  exclusive  and  aristocratic  Protestant  Epis 
copal  communion,  pretending  to  call  rain  and  to  banish 
pestilence,  to  protect  crops  and  win  wars  and  heal  those 
who  are  "sick  in  estate" — that  is,  who  are  in  business 
trouble  ? 

The  reader  will  say  that  I  am  a  cynic,  despising  my 
fellows ;  but  that  is  not  so.  I  am  an  economic  scientist, 
analyzing  the  forces  which  operate  in  human  societies. 
I  blame  the  prophets  and  priests  and  healers  for  their 
fall  from  idealism ;  but  I  blame  still  more  the  competi 
tive  wage-system,  which  presents  them  with  the  altern 
ative  to  swindle  or  to  starve. 

For,  you  see,  the  prophet  has  to  have  food.  He  has 
frequently  got  along  with  almost  none,  and  with  only  a 
rag  for  clothing ;  in  Palestine  and  India,  where  the  cli 
mate  is  warm,  a  sincere  faith  has  been  possible  for 
short  periods.  But  the  modern  prophet  who  expects  to 
influence  the  minds  of  men  has  to  have  books  and  news 
papers  ;  he  will  find  a  telephone  and  a  typewriter  and 
postage-stamps  hardly  to  be  dispensed  with,  also  in 
Europe  and  America  some  sort  of  a  roof  over  his  meet- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  275 

ing  place.  So  the  prophet  is  caught,  like  all  the  rest  of 
us,  in  the  net  of  the  speculator  and  the  landlord.  He 
has  to  get  money,  and  in  order  to  get  it  he  has  to  im 
press  those  who  already  have  it — people  whose  minds 
and  souls  have  been  deformed  by  the  system  of  para 
sitism  and  exploitation. 

So  the  prophet  becomes  a  charlatan;  or,  if  he  re 
fuses,  he  becomes  a  martyr,  and  founds  a  church  which 
becomes  a  church  of  charlatans.  I  care  not  how  sincere, 
how  passionately  proletarian  a  religious  prophet  may 
be,  that  is  the  fate  which  sooner  or  later  befalls  him 
in  a  competitive  society — to  be  the  founder  of  an  or 
ganization  of  fools,  conducted  by  knaves,  for  the  ben 
efit  of  wolves.  That  fate  befell  Buddha  and  Jesus,  it  be 
fell  Ignatius  Loyola  and  Francis  of  Assisi,  John  Fox 
and  John  Calvin  and  John  Wesley. 

A  friend  of  mine  who  has  made  a  study  of  "Spiri 
tualism"  describes  to  me  the  conditions  in  that  field. 
The  mediums  are  people,  mostly  women,  with  a  peculiar 
gift ;  whether  we  believe  in  the  survival  of  personality, 
or  whether  we  call  it  telepathy,  does  not  alter  the  fact 
that  they  have  a  rare  and  special  sensitiveness,  a  new 
faculty  which  science  must  investigate.  They  come, 
poor  people  mostly — f or  the  well-to-do  will  seldom  give 
their  time  to  exacting  and  wearisome  experiments. 
They  come,  wearing  frayed  and  thin  clothing,  shiver 
ing  with  cold,  obviously  undernourished ;  and  their  sur 
vival  depends  upon  their  producing  "phenomena" — 
which  phenomena  are  capricious,  and  will  not  come  at 
call.  So,  what  more  natural  than  that  mediums  should 
resort  to  faking?  That  the  whole  field  should  be  reek 
ing  with  fraud,  and  science  should  be  held  back  from 


276  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

understanding  an  extraordinary  power  of  the  subcon 
scious  mind? 

Ever  since  we  came  to  Pasadena,  various  ladies  have 
been  telling  us  about  the  wondrous  powers  of  a  mulatto- 
woman,  a  manicurist  at  the  city's  most  fashionable 
hotel.  The  other  day,  out  of  curiosity,  my  wife  and  I 
went;  the  moment  the  "medium"  opened  her  mouth 
my  wife  recognized  her  as  the  person  who  has  been 
trying  for  several  months  to  get  me  on  the  telephone  to 
tell  me  how  the  spirit  of  Jack  London  is  seeking  to 
communicate  with  me !  The  seance  was  a  public  one,  a 
gathering  composed,  half  of  wealthy  and  cultured  so 
ciety-women,  and  half  of  confederates,  people  with  the 
dialect  and  manners  of  a  vaudeville  troupe.  A  mega 
phone  was  set  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  the  room  was 
made  dark,  a  couple  of  hymns  were  sung,  and  then  the 
spirit  of  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  spoke  through  the 
megaphone  with  a  Bowery  accent,  and  gave  communi 
cations  from  relatives  and  friends  of  the  various  con 
federates.  "Jesus  is  with  us",  said  Dr.  Holmes.  "The 
spirit  of  Jesus  bids  you  to  study  spiritualism."  And 
then  came  the  voice  of  a  child:  "Mamma!  Mamma!" 
"It  is  little  Georgie !"  cried  Dr.  Holmes ;  and  one  of  the 
society  ladies  started,  and  answered,  and  presently 
burst  into  tears.  A  marvelous  piece  of  evidence — es 
pecially  when  you  recall  that  the  story  of  this  mother's 
bereavement  had  been  published  in  all  the  papers  a 
couple  of  months  before ! 

And  this  kind  of  swindling  is  going  on  every  night 
in  every  city  of  America.  It  goes  on  wholesale  for 
months  every  summer  at  Lily  Dale,  in  New  York  State, 
where  the  spiritualists  hold  their  combination  of  Chau- 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  277 

tauqua  and  Coney  Island.  And  the  same  thing  is  going 
on  in  the  field  of  mental  healing,  and  of  all  other  "oc 
cult"  forces  and  powers,  whether  real  or  imaginary.  It 
is  going  on  with  new  spiritual  fervors,  new  moral  ideal 
isms,  new  poetry,  new  music,  new  painting,  new  sculp 
ture.  The  faker,  the  charlatan  is  everywhere — using 
the  mental  and  moral  and  artistic  forces  of  life  as  a 
means  of  delivering  himself  from  economic  servitude. 
Everywhere  I  turn  I  see  it — credulity  being  exploited, 
and  men  of  practical  judgment,  watching  the  game  and 
seeing  through  it,  made  hard  in  their  attitude  of  ma 
terialism.  How  many  men  I  know  who  sit  by  in  sullen 
protest  while  their  wives  drift  from  one  new  quackery 
to  another,  wasting  their  income  seeking  health  and 
happiness  in  futile  emotionalism !  How  many  kind  and 
sensitive  spirits  I  know — both  men  and  women — who 
pour  their  treasures  of  faith  and  admiration  into  the 
laps  of  hierophants  who  began  by  fooling  all  mankind 
and  ended  by  fooling  themselves ! 

In  each  one  of  the  cults  of  what  I  have  called  the 
"Church  of  the  Quacks",  there  are  thousands,  perhaps 
millions  of  entirely  sincere,  self-sacrificing  people.  They 
will  read  this  book — if  anyone  can  persuade  them  to 
read  it — with  pain  and  anger ;  thinking  that  I  am  mock 
ing  at  their  faith,  and  have  no  appreciation  of  their  de 
votion.  All  that  I  can  say  is  that  I  am  trying  to  show 
them  how  they  are  being  trapped,  how  their  fine  and 
generous  qualities  are  being  used  by  exploiters  of  one 
sort  or  another;  and  how  this  must  continue,  world 
without  end,  until  there  is  order  in  the  material  affairs 
of  the  race,  until  justice  has  been  established  as  the  law 
of  man's  dealing  with  his  fellows. 


BOOK  SEVEN 

The  Church  of  the  Social  Revolution 

They  have  taken  the  tomb  of  our  Comrade  Christ — 

Infidel  hordes  that  believe  not  in  man; 
Stable  and  stall  for  his  birth  sufficed, 

But  his  tomb  is  built  on  a  kingly  plan. 
They  have  hedged  him  round  with  pomp  and  parade, 

They  have  buried  him  deep  under  steel  and  stone- 
But  we  come  leading  the  great  Crusade 

To  give  our  Comrade  back  to  his  own. 

Waddell. 


579 


THE  PROFITS   OF  RELIGION  281 

Christ  and  Caesar 

In  the  most  deeply  significant  of  the  legends  con 
cerning  Jesus,  we  are  told  how  the  devil  took  him  up 
into  a  high  mountain  and  showed  him  all  the  kingdoms 
of  the  world  in  a  moment  of  time ;  and  the  devil  said 
unto  him:  "All  this  power  will  I  give  unto  thee,  and 
the  glory  of  them,  for  that  is  delivered  unto  me,  and  to 
whomsoever  I  will,  I  give  it.  If  thou,  therefore,  wilt 
worship  me,  all  shall  be  thine."  Jesus,  as  we  know,  an 
swered  and  said  "Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan !"  And  he 
really  meant  it;  he  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
worldly  glory,  with  "temporal  power;"  he  chose  the 
career  of  a  revolutionary  agitator,  and  died  the  death 
of  a  disturber  of  the  peace.  And  for  two  or  three  cen 
turies  his  church  followed  in  his  footsteps,  cherishing 
his  proletarian  gospel.  The  early  Christians  had  "all 
things  in  common,  except  women ;"  they  lived  as  social 
outcasts,  hiding  in  deserted  catacombs,  and  being 
thrown  to  lions  and  boiled  in  oil. 

But  the  devil  is  a  subtle  worm ;  he  does  not  give  up 
at  one  defeat,  for  he  knows  human  nature,  and  the 
strength  of  the  forces  which  battle  for  him.  He  failed 
to  get  Jesus,  but  he  came  again,  to  get  Jesus'  church. 
He  came  when,  through  the  power  of  the  new  revolu 
tionary  idea,  the  Church  had  won  a  position  of  tremend 
ous  power  in  the  decaying  Roman  Empire;  and  the 
subtle  worm  assumed  the  guise  or  no  less  a  person  than 
the  Emperor  himself,  suggesting  that  he  should  become 
a  convert  to  the  new  faith,  so  that  the  Church  and  he 
might  work  together  for  the  greater  glory  of  God.  The 
bishops  and  fathers  of  the  Church,  ambitious  for  their 
organization,  fell  for  this  scheme,  and  Satan  went  off 


282  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

laughing  to  himself.  He  had  got  everything  he  had 
asked  from  Jesus  three  hundred  years  before ;  he  had 
got  the  world's  greatest  religion.  How  complete  and 
swift  was  his  success  you  may  judge  from  the  fact  that 
fifty  years  later  we  find  the  Emperor  Valentinian  com 
pelled  to  pass  an  edict  limiting  the  donations  of  emo 
tional  females  to  the  church  in  Rome ! 

From  that  time  on  Christianity  has  been  what  I 
have  shown  in  this  book,  the  chief  of  the  enemies  of 
social  progress.  From  the  days  of  Constantine  to  the 
days  of  Bismarck  and  Mark  Hanna,  Christ  and  Caesar 
have  been  one,  and  the  Church  has  been  the  shield  and 
armor  of  predatory  economic  might.  With  only  one 
qualification  to  be  noted:  that  the  Church  has  never 
been  able  to  suppress  entirely  the  memory  of  her  pro 
letarian  Founder.  She  has  done  her  best,  of  course ;  we 
have  seen  how  her  scholars  twist  his  words  out  of  their 
sense,  and  the  Catholic  Church  even  goes  so  far  as  to 
keep  to  the  use  of  a  dead  language,  so  that  her  victim? 
may  not  hear  the  words  of  Jesus  in  a  form  they  can 
understand. 

Tis  well  that  such  seditious  songs  are  sung 
Only  by  priests,  and  in  the  Latin  tongue! 

But  in  spite  of  this,  the  history  of  the  Church  has 
been  one  incessant  struggle  with  upstarts  and  rebels 
who  have  filled  themselves  with  the  spirit  of  the  Mag 
nificat  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  of  that  bit 
terly  class-conscious  proletarian,  James,  the  brother  of 
Jesus. 

And  here  is  the  thing  to  be  noted,  that  the  factor 
which  has  given  life  to  Christianity,  which  enables  it  to 
keep  its  hold  on  the  hearts  of  men  today,  is  precisely 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  283 

this  new  wine  of  faith  and  fervor  which  has  been 
poured  into  it  by  generation  after  generation  of  poor 
men  who  live  like  Jesus  as  outcasts,  and  die  like  Jesus 
as  criminals,  and  are  revered  like  Jesus  as  founders  and 
saints.  The  greatest  of  the  early  Church  fathers  were 
bitterly  fought  by  the  Church  authorities  of  their  own 
time.  St.  Chrysostom,  Bishop  of  Constantinople,  was 
turned  out  of  office,  exiled  and  practically  martyred; 
St.  Basil  was  persecuted  by  the  Emperor  Valens;  St. 
Ambrose  excommunicated  the  tyrannical  Emperor 
Theodosius ;  St.  Cyprian  gave  all  his  wealth  to  the  poor, 
and  was  exiled  and  finally  martyred.  In  the  same  way, 
most  of  the  heretics  whom  the  Holy  Inquisition  tor 
tured  and  burned  were  proletarian  rebels;  the  saints 
whom  the  Church  reveres,  the  founders  of  the  orders 
which  gave  it  life  for  century  after  century,  were  men 
who  sought  to  return  to  the  example  of  the  carpenter's 
son.  Let  us  hear  a  Christian  scholar  on  this  point,  Prof. 
Rauschenbusch : 

The  movement  of  Francis  of  Assisi,  of  the  Waldenses,  of  the 
Humiliati  and  Bons  Hommes,  were  all  inspired  by  democratic 
and  communistic  ideals.  Wiclif  was  by  far  the  greatest  doctrinal 
reformer  before  the  reformation;  but  his  eyes,  too,  were  first 
opened  to  the  doctrinal  errors  of  the  Roman  Church  by  joining 
in  a  great  national  and  patriotic  movement  against  the  alien 
domination  and  extortion  of  the  Church.  The  Bohemian  revolt, 
made  famous  by  the  name  of  John  Huss,  was  quite  as  much 
political  and  social  as  religious.  Savonarola  was  a  great  demo 
crat  as  well  as  a  religious  prophet.  In  his  famous  interview  with 
the  dying  Lorenzo  de  Medici  he  made  three  demands  as  a  condi 
tion  for  granting  absolution.  Of  the  man  he  demanded  a  living 
faith  in  God's  mercy.  Of  the  millionaire  he  demanded  restitu 
tion  of  his  ill-gotten  wealth.  Of  the  political  usurper  he  de 
manded  the  restoration  of  the  liberties  of  the  people  of  Florence. 
It  is  significant  that  the  dying  sinner  found  it  easy  to  assent  to 


284  THE  PROFITS   OF  RELIGION 

the  first,  hard  to  assent  to  the  second,  and  impossible  to  concede 
the  last. 

Locusts  and  Wild  Honey 

This  proletarian  strain  in  Christianity  goes  back  to 
a  time  long  before  Jesus ;  it  seems  to  have  been  inher 
ent  in  the  religious  character  of  the  Jews — that  stub 
born  independence,  that  stiff-necked  insistence  on  the 
right  of  a  man  to  interview  God  for  himself  and  to  find 
out  what  God  wants  him  to  do ;  also  the  inclination  to 
find  that  God  wants  him  to  oppose  earthly  rulers  and 
their  plundering  of  the  poor.  What  is  it  that  gives  to 
the  Bible  the  vitality  it  has  today?  Its  literary  style? 
To  say  that  is  to  display  the  ignorance  of  the  cultured ; 
for  elevation  of  style  is  a  by-product  of  passionate  con 
viction  ;  it  is  what  the  Jewish  writers  had  to  say,  and 
not  the  way  they  said  it,  that  has  given  them  their  hold 
upon  mankind.  Was  it  their  insistence  upon  conscience, 
their  fear  of  God  as  the  beginning  of  wisdom  ?  But  that 
same  element  appears  in  the  Babylonian  psalms,  which 
are  as  eloquent  and  as  sincere  as  those  of  the  Hebrews, 
yet  are  read  only  by  scholars.  Was  it  their  sense  of  the 
awful  presence  of  divinity,  of  the  soul  immortal  in 
its  keeping  ?  The  Egyptians  had  that  far  more  than  the 
Hebrews,  and  yet  we  do  not  cherish  their  religious 
books.  Or  was  it  the  love  of  man  for  all  things  living,  the 
lesson  of  charity  upon  which  the  Catholics  lay  such 
stress  ?  The  gentle  Buddha  had  that,  and  had  it  long  be 
fore  Christ ;  also  his  priests  had  metaphysical  subtlety, 
greater  than  that  of  John  the  Apostle  or  Thomas 
Aquinas. 

No,  there  is  one  thing  and  one  only  which  distin 
guishes  the  Hebrew  sacred  writings  from  all  others, 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  285 

and  that  is  their  insistent  note  of  proletarian  revolt, 
their  furious  denunciations  of  exploiters,  and  of  luxury 
and  wantonness,  the  vices  of  the  rich.  Of  that  note  the 
Assyrian  and  Chaldean  and  Babylonian  writing  contain 
not  a  trace,  and  the  Egyptian  hardly  enough  to  men 
tion.  The  Hindoos  had  a  trace  of  it ;  but  the  true,  na 
tural-born  rebels  of  all  time  were  the  Hebrews.  They 
were  rebels  against  oppression  in  ancient  Judea,  as  they 
are  today  in  Petrograd  and  New  York;  the  spirit  of 
equality  and  brotherhood  which  spoke  through  Ezekiel 
and  Amos  and  Isaiah,  through  John  the  Baptist  and 
Jesus  and  James,  spoke  in  the  last  century  through 
Marx  and  Lassalle  and  Jaures,  and  speaks  today 
through  Liebknecht  and  Rosa  Luxemburg  and  Karl 
Kautsky  and  Israel  Zangwill  and  Morris  Hillquit  and 
Abraham  Cahan  and  Emma  Goldman  and  the  Joseph 
Pels  endowment. 

The  legal  rate  of  interest  throughout  the  Babylon 
ian  Empire  was  20%  ;  the  laws  of  Manu  permitted  24%, 
while  the  laws  of  the  Egyptians  only  stepped  in  to  pre 
vent  more  than  100%.  But  listen  to  this  Hebrew  law: 

If  thy  brother  be  waxen  poor,  and  fallen  in  decay  with  thee, 
then  thou  shalt  relieve  him,  yea,  though  he  be  a  stranger  or  a 
sojourner,  that  he  may  live  with  thee:  Take  thou  no  interest 
of  him,  or  increase;  but  fear  thy  God  that  thy  brother  may 
live  with  thee.  Thou  shalt  not  give  him  any  money  upon  usury, 
nor  lend  him  thy  victuals  for  increase. 

And  so  on,  forbidding  that  Hebrews  be  sold  as  bond 
servants,  and  commanding  that  at  the  end  of  fifty  years 
all  debtors  shall  have  their  debts  forgiven  and  their 
lands  returned  to  them.  And  note  that  this  is  not  the 
raving  of  agitators,  the  demand  of  a  minority  party;  it 
is  the  law  of  the  Hebrew  land. 


286  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

There  has  been  of  late  a  great  deal  of  new  discovery 
concerning  the  early  Jews.  Conrad  Noel  summarizes 
the  results  as  follows : 

The  land-mark  law,  which  sternly  forbids  encroachment  upon 
peasant  rights;  consideration  for  the  foreigner;  additional  sani 
tary  and  food  laws;  tithe  regulations  on  behalf  of  widows,  or 
phans,  foreigners,  etc.;  that  those  who  have  no  economic  inde 
pendence  should  eat  and  be  satisfied;  that  loans  should  be  given 
cheerfully,  not  only  without  any  interest,  but  even  at  the  risk  of 
losing  the  principal.  To  withhold  a  loan  because  the  year  of  re 
lease  is  at  hand  in  which  the  principal  is  no  longer  recoverable,  is 
described  as  a  grave  sin.  When  you  are  compelled  to  free  your 
slaves,  you  must  give  them  sufficient  capital  to  embark  upon 
some  industry  which  shall  prevent  their  falling  back  into  slavery. 
A  number  of  holidays  are  insisted  upon.  There  must  be  no  more 
crushing  of  the  poor  out  of  existence,  for  God  cares  for  these 
people  who  have  been  driven  to  poverty,  and  they  shall  never 
cease  out  of  the  land.  Howbeit  there  shall  be  no  poor  with  you, 
for  the  Lord  will  bless  you,  if  you  will  obey  these  laws. 

But  then  prosperity  came,  and  culture,  which  meant 
contact  with  the  capitalist  ideas  of  the  heathen  em 
pires.  The  Jews  fell  from  the  stern  justice  of  their 
fathers;  and  so  came  the  prophets,  wild-eyed  men  of 
the  people,  clad  in  camel's  hair  and  living  upon  locusts 
and  wild  honey,  breaking  in  upon  priests  and  kings  and 
capitalists  with  their  furious  denunciations.  And  al 
ways  they  incited  to  class  war  and  social  disturbance. 
I  quote  Conrad  Noel  again : 

Nathan  and  Gad  had  been  David's  political  advisers,  Abijah 
had  stirred  Jeroboam  to  revolt,  Elijah  had  resisted  Ahab,  Elisha 
had  fanned  the  rebellion  of  Jehu,  Amos  thunders  against  the 
misrule  of  the  king  of  Israel,  Isaiah  denounces  the  landlords  and 
the  usurers,  Micah  charges  them  with  blood-guiltiness;  Jere 
miah  and  the  latter  prophets,  though  they  strike  a  more  intimate 
note  of  personal  repentance,  strike  it  as  the  prelude  to  that  na 
tional  restoration  for  which  they  hunger  as  exiles. 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  287 

The  first  chapters  of  Isaiah  are  typical  of  the  Old  Testament 
point  of  view.  Just  as  the  prophets  of  the  nineteenth  century 
thundered  against  the  "Christian"  employers  of  Lancashire,  and 
told  them  their  houses  were  cemented  with  the  blood  of  little 
children,  so  Isaiah  cries  against  his  generation:  "Your  govern 
ing  classes  companion  with  thieves;  behold  you  build  up  Sion 
with  blood."  Their  ceremonial  and  their  Sabbath  keeping  are  an 
abomination  to  God.  "When  ye  spread  forth  your  hands,  I  will 
hide  mine  eyes  from  you.  Your  hands  are  full  of  blood."  The 
poor  man  is  robbed.  The  rich  exact  usury.  "Woe  unto  you  that 
lay  house  to  house  and  field  to  field,  that  ye  may  dwell  alone 
in  the  midst  of  the  land."  "Wash  you,  make  you  clean,  put  away 
the  evil  of  your  doing  from  before  mine  eyes;  cease  to  do  evil; 
learn  to  do  well,  seek  judgment^  relieve  the  oppressed,  judge  the 
fatherless,  plead  for  the  widow.  Come  now,  let  us  reason  to 
gether,  saith  the  Lord.  Though  your  sins  be  blood-colored,  they 
shall  be  as  white  as  snow;  though  they  be  red  like  crimson,  they 
shall  be  as  wool.  If  ye  be  willing  and  obedient,  ye  shall  eat  the 
good  of  the  land.  But  if  ye  refuse  and  rebel,  ye  shall  be  devoured 
by  the  sword. 

Mother  Earth 

And  nowadays  we  have  the  Socialist  and  Anarchist 
agitators,  following  the  same  tradition,  possessed  by 
the  same  dream  as  the  ancient  Hebrew  prophets.  I 
have  mentioned  Emma  Goldman;  it  may  be  that  the 
reader  is  not  familiar  with  her  writings,  and  does  not 
realize  how  very  Biblical  she  is,  both  in  point  of  view 
and  style.  Let  me  quote  a  few  sentences  from  a  recent 
issue  of  her  paper,  "Mother  Earth",  on  the  subject  of 
our  ruling  classes  and  their  social  responsibility : 

Yes,  you  idle  rich,  you  may  howl  about  what  we  mean  to 
do  to  you!  Your  riches  are  rotten  and  your  fine  clothes  are 
falling  from  your  backs.  Your  stocks  and  bonds  are  so  tainted 
that  the  ink  on  them  should  turn  to  acid  and  eat  holes  in  your 
pockets  and  your  skins.  You  have  piled  up  your  dirty  millions, 


288  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

but  what  wages  have  you  paid  to  the  poor  devils  of  farm  hands 
you  have  robbed?  And  do  you  imagine  they  won't  remember  it 
when  the  revolution  comes?  You  loll  on  soft  couches  and  amuse 
yourselves  with  your  mistresses;  you  think  you  are  "it"  and  the 
world  is  yours.  You  send  militiamen  and  shoot  down  our  organiz 
ers,  and  we  are  helpless.  But  wait,  comrades,  our  time  is  coming. 

Doubtless  the  reader  is  well  satisfied  that  the  author 
of  this  tirade  is  now  in  jail,  where  she  can  no  longer 
defy  the  laws  of  good  taste.  They  always  put  the  an 
cient  prophets  in  jail ;  that  is  the  way  to  know  a  prophet 
when  you  meet  him.  Let  me  quote  another  prophet  who 
is  now  behind  bars — Alexander  Berkman,  in  his  "Pris 
on  Memoirs  of  an  Anarchist",  discussing  the  same  sub 
ject  of  plutocratic  pretension : 

Tell  me,  you  four  hundred,  where  did  you  get  it?  Who  gave 
it  to  you  ?  Your  grandfather,  you  say  ?  Your  father  ?  Can  you  go 
all  the  way  back  and  show  there  is  no  flaw  anywhere  in  your 
title  ?  I  tell  you  that  the  beginning  and  the  root  of  your  wealth 
is  necessarily  in  injustice.  And  why?  Because  Nature  did  not 
make  this  man  rich  and  that  man  poor  from  the  start.  Nature 
does  not  intend  for  one  man  to  have  capital  and  another  to  be 
a  wage-slave.  Nature  made  the  earth  to  be  cultivated  by  all. 
The  idea  we  Anarchists  have  of  the  rich  is  of  highwaymen,  stand 
ing  in  the  street  and  robbing  every  one  that  passes. 

Or  take  "Big  Bill"  Haywood,  chief  of  the  I.  W.  W. 
Hear  what  he  has  to  say  in  a  pamphlet  addressed  to  the 
harvest-hands  he  is  seeking  to  organize : 

How  much  farther  do  you  plutes  expect  to  go  with  your 
grabbing?  Do  you  want  to  be  the  only  people  left  on  earth? 
Why  else  do  you  drive  out  the  workers  from  all  share  in  Na 
ture,  and  claim  everything  for  yourselves  ?  The  earth  was  made 
for  all,  rich  and  poor  alike;  where  do  you  get  your  title  deeds  tc 
it?  Nature  gave  everything  for  all  men  to  use  alike;  it  is  only 
your  robbery  which  makes  your  so-called  "ownership".  Capital 
has  no  rights.  The  land  belongs  to  Nature,  and  we  are  all  Na 
ture's  sons. 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  289 

Or  take  Eugene  V.  Debs,  three  times  candidate  of 
the  Socialist  Party  for  President.  I  quote  from  one  of 
his  pamphlets : 

The  propertied  classes  are  like  people  who  go  into  a  public 
theatre  and  refuse  to  let  anyone  else  come  in,  treating  as  private 
property  what  is  meant  for  social  use.  If  each  man  would  take 
only  what  he  needs,  and  leave  the  balance  to  those  who  have 
nothing,  there  would  be  no  rich  and  no  poor.  The  rich  man  is 
a  thief. 

I  might  go  on  citing  such  quotations  for  many 
pages ;  but  I  know  that  Emma  Goldman  and  Alexander 
Berkman  and  Bill  Haywood  and  Gene  Debs  may  read 
this  book,  and  I  don't  want  them  to  close  it  in  the  mid 
dle  and  throw  it  at  me.  Therefore  let  me  hasten  to  ex 
plain  my  poor  joke;  the  sentiments  I  have  been  quoting 
are  not  those  of  our  modern  agitators,  but  of  another 
group  of  ancient  ones.  The  first  is  not  from  Emma  Gold 
man,  nor  did  I  find  it  in  "Mother  Earth".  I  found  it  in 
the  Epistle  of  James,  believed  by  orthodox  authorities 
to  have  been  James,  the  brother  of  Jesus.  It  is  exactly 
what  he  wrote — save  that  I  have  put  it  into  modern 
phrases,  and  changed  the  swing  of  the  sentences,  in 
order  that  those  familiar  with  the  Bible  might  read  it 
without  suspicion.  The  second  passage  is  not  in  the 
writings  of  Alexander  Berkman,  but  in  those  of  St. 
John  Chrysostom,  most  famous  of  the  early  fathers, 
who  lived  374-407.  The  third  is  not  from  the  pen  of 
"Big  Bill"  but  from  that  of  St.  Ambrose,  a  father  of 
the  Latin  Church,  340-397,  and  the  fourth  is  not  by 
Comrade  Debs,  but  by  St.  Basil  of  the  Greek  Church, 
329-379.  And  if  the  reader  objects  to  my  having  fooled 
him  for  a  minute  or  two,  what  will  he  say  to  the  Chris- 


290  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

tian  Church,  which  has  been  fooling  him  for  sixteen 
hundred  years? 

The  Soap  Box 

This  book  will  be  denounced  from  one  end  of  Christ 
endom  to  the  other  as  the  work  of  a  blasphemous  infi 
del.  Yet  it  stands  in  the  direct  line  of  the  Chris 
tian  tradition:  written  by  a  man  who  was  brought  up 
in  the  Church,  and  loved  it  with  all  his  heart  and  soul, 
and  was  driven  out  by  the  formalists  and  hypocrites  in 
high  places ;  a  man  who  thinks  of  Jesus  more  frequent 
ly  and  with  more  devotion  than  he  thinks  of  any  other 
man  that  lives  or  has  ever  lived  on  earth ;  and  who  has 
but  one  purpose  in  all  that  he  says  and  does,  to  bring 
into  reality  the  dream  that  Jesus  dreamed  of  peace  on 
earth  and  good  will  toward  men. 

I  will  go  farther  yet  and  say  that  not  merely  is  this 
book  written  for  the  cause  of  Jesus,  but  it  is  written  in 
the  manner  of  Jesus.  We  read  his  bitter  railings  at  the 
Pharisees,  and  miss  the  point  entirely,  because  the  word 
Pharisee  has  become  to  us  a  word  of  reproach.  But  this 
is  due  solely  to  Jesus ;  in  his  time  the  word  was  a  holy 
word,  it  meant  the  most  orthodox  and  respectable,  the 
ultra  high-church  devotees  of  Jerusalem.  The  way  to 
get  the  spirit  of  the  tirades  of  Jesus  is  to  do  with  him 
what  we  did  with  the  early  church  fathers — translate 
him  into  American.  This  time,  since  the  reader  shares 
the  secret,  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  disguise  the  Bible 
style,  and  we  may  follow  the  text  exactly.  Let  me  try 
the  twenty-third  chapter  of  Matthew,  omitting  seven 
verses  which  refer  to  subtleties  of  Hebrew  casuistry, 
for  which  we  should  have  to  go  to  Lyman  Abbott  or  St. 
Alphonsus  to  find  a  parallel : 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  291 

Then  Jesus  mounted  upon  a  soap-box,  and  began  a  speech, 
saying,  The  doctors  of  divinity  and  Episcopalians  fill  the  Fifth 
Avenue  churches;  and  it  would  be  all  right  if  you  were  to  listen 
to  what  they  preach,  and  do  that;  but  don't  follow  their  actions, 
for  they  never  practice  what  they  preach.  They  load  the  backs 
of  the  working-classes  with  crushing  burdens,  but  they  them 
selves  never  move  a  finger  to  carry  a  burden,  and  everything 
they  do  is  for  show.  They  wear  frock-coats  and  silk  hats  on  Sun 
days,  and  they  sit  at  the  speakers'  table  at  the  banquets  of  the 
Civic  Federation,  and  they  occupy  the  best  pews  in  the  churches, 
and  their  doings  are  reported  in  all  the  papers;  they  are  called 
leading  citizens  and  pillars  of  the  church.  But  don't  you  be 
called  leading  citizens,  for  the  only  useful  man  is  the  man  who 
produces.  (Applause).  And  whoever  exalts  himself  shall  be 
abased,  and  whoever  humbles  himself  shall  be  exalted. 

Woe  unto  you,  doctors  of  divinity  and  Catholics,  hypocrites! 
for  you  shut  up  the  kingdom  of  Heaven  against  men;  you  don't 
go  in  yourself  and  you  don't  let  others  go  in.  Woe  unto  you, 
doctors  of  divinity  and  Presbyterians,  hypocrites!  for  you  fore 
close  mortgages  on  widows'  houses,  and  for  a  pretense  you  make 
long  prayers.  For  this  you  will  receive  the  greater  damnation! 
Woe  unto  you,  doctors  of  divinity  and  Methodists,  hypocrites! 
for  you  send  missionaries  to  Africa  to  make  one  convert,  and 
when  you  have  made  him,  he  is  twice  as  much  a  child  of  hell 
as  yourselves.  (Applause).  Woe  unto  you,  blind  guides,  with 
your  subtleties  of  doctrine,  your  transubstantiation  and  consub- 
stantiation  and  all  the  rest  of  it;  you  fools  and  blind!  Woe  unto 
you,  doctors  of  divinity  and  Episcopalians,  hypocrites!  for  you 
drop  your  checks  into  the  collection-plate  and  you  pay  no  heed 
to  the  really  important  things  in  the  Bible,  which  are  justice  and 
mercy  and  faith  in  goodness.  You  blind  guides,  who  strain  at  a 
gnat  and  swallow  a  camel!  (Laughter).  Woe  unto  you,  doctors 
of  divinity  and  Anglicans,  hypocrites!  for  you  bathe  yourselves 
and  dress  in  immaculate  clothing  but  within  you  are  full  of  ex 
tortion  and  excess.  You  blind  high  churchmen,  clean  first  your 
hearts,  so  that  the  clothes  you  wear  may  represent  you.  Woe 
unto  you,  doctors  of  divinity  and  Baptists,  hypocrites!  for  you 
are  like  marble  tombs  which  appear  beautiful  on  the  outside,  but 
inside  are  full  of  dead  men's  bones  and  all  uncleanness.  Even  so 


292  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

you  appear  righteous  to  men,  but  inside  you  are  full  of  hypocrisy 
and  iniquity.  (Applause).  Woe  unto  you,  doctors  of  divinity  and 
Unitarians,  hypocrites!  because  you  erect  statues  to  dead  re 
formers,  and  put  wreathes  upon  the  tombs  of  old-time  martyrs. 
You  say,  if  we  had  been  alive  in  those  days,  we  would  not  have 
helped  to  kill  those  good  men.  That  ought  to  show  you  how  to 
treat  us  at  present.  (Laughter).  But  you  are  the  children  of 
those  who  killed  the  good  men;  so  go  ahead  and  kill  us  too!  You 
serpents,  you  generation  of  vipers,  how  can  you  escape  the  dam 
nation  of  hell  ? 

At  this  point,  according  to  the  report  published  in 
the  Jerusalem  "Times",  a  police  sergeant  stepped  up  to 
the  orator  and  notified  him  that  he  was  under  arrest; 
he  submitted  quietly,  but  one  of  his  followers  attempted 
to  use  a  knife,  and  was  severely  clubbed.  Jesus  was 
taken  to  the  station-house  followed  by  a  riotous  throng, 
and  held  upon  a  charge  of  disorderly  conduct.  Next 
morning  the  Rev.  Dr.  Caiaphas  of  Old  Trinity  appeared 
against  him,  and  Magistrate  Pilate  sentenced  him  to  six 
months  on  BlackwelPs  Island,  remarking  that  from  this 
time  on  he  proposed  to  make  an  example  of  those  soap 
box  orators  who  persist  in  using  threatening  and 
abusive  language.  Just  as  the  prisoner  was  being  led 
away,  a  detective  appeared  with  a  requisition  from  the 
Governor,  ordering  that  Jesus  be  taken  to  San  Francis 
co,  where  he  is  under  indictment  for  murder  in  the  first 
degree,  it  being  charged  that  his  teachings  helped  to 
incite  the  Preparedness  Day  explosion. 

The  Church  Machine 

The  Catholics  of  His  time  came  to  Jesus  and  said, 
"Master,  we  would  have  a  sign  of  Thee" — meaning  that 
they  wanted  him  to  do  some  magic,  to  prove  to  their 
vulgar  minds  that  his  power  came  from  God.  He  an- 


THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION  293 

swered  by  calling  them  an  evil  and  adulterous  genera 
tion — which  is  exactly  what  I  have  said  about  the  Papal 
machine.  The  Baptists  and  Methodists  and  Presbyter 
ians  and  other  book-worshippers  of  his  time  accused 
him  of  violating  the  sacred  commands  so  definitely  set 
down  in  their  ancient  texts,  and  to  them  he  answered 
that  the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man  and  not  man  for 
the  Sabbath;  he  called  them  hypocrites,  and  quoted 
Karl  Marx  at  them — "This  people  honoreth  me  with 
their  lips,  but  their  heart  is  far  from  me."  Because  he 
despised  the  company  of  the  respectables,  and  went 
among  the  humble  and  human  folk  of  his  own  class  in 
the  places  where  they  gathered — the  public  houses — 
the  churchly  scandal-mongers  called  him  "a  man  glut 
tonous  and  a  wine-bibber,  a  friend  of  publicans  and  sin 
ners" — precisely  as  in  the  old  days  they  used  to  sneer 
at  the  Socialists  for  having  their  meetings  in  the  back 
rooms  of  saloons,  and  precisely  as  they  still  denounce 
us  as  free-lovers  and  atheists. 

But  the  longing  for  justice  between  man  and  man, 
which  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth,  is  the  deep 
est  instinct  of  the  human  heart,  and  the  voice  of  the 
carpenter  cannot  be  confined  within  the  thickest 
church-walls,  nor  drowned  by  all  the  pealing  organs 
in  Christendom.  Even  in  these  days,  when  the  power 
of  Mammon  is  more  widespread,  more  concentrated 
and  more  systematized  than  ever  before  in  history — 
even  in  these  days  of  Morgan  and  Rockefeller,  there  are 
Christian  clergymen  who  dare  to  preach  as  Jesus 
preached.  One  by  one  they  are  cast  out  of  the  Church — 
Father  McGlynn,  George  D.  Herron,  Alexander  Irvine, 
J.  Stitt  Wilson,  Austin  Adams,  Algernon  Crapsey, 


294  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

Bouck  White;  but  their  voices  are  not  silenced,  they 
are  like  the  leaven,  to  which  Jesus  compared  the  king 
dom  of  God — a  woman  took  it  and  hid  it  in  three  mea 
sures  of  meal  till  the  whole  was  leavened.  The  young 
theological  students  read,  and  some  of  them  under 
stand  ;  I  know  three  brothers  in  one  family  who  have 
just  gone  into  the  Church,  and  are  preaching  straight 
social  revolution — and  the  scribes  and  the  pharisees 
have  not  yet  dared  to  cast  them  out. 

In  this  book  I  have  portrayed  the  Christian  Church 
as  the  servant  and  henchman  of  Big  Business,  a  part  of 
the  system  of  Mammon.  Every  church  is  necessarily  a 
money  machine,  holding  and  administering  property. 
And  it  is  not  alone  the  Catholic  Church  which  is  in  pol 
itics,  seeking  favors  from  the  state — the  exemption  of 
church  property  from  taxation,  exemption  of  ministers 
from  military  service,  free  transportation  for  them  and 
their  families  on  the  railroads,  the  control  of  charity 
and  education,  laws  to  deprive  people  of  amusements 
on  Sunday — so  on  through  a  long  list.  As  the  churches 
have  to  be  built  with  money,  you  find  that  in  them 
the  rich  possess  the  control  and  demand  the  deference, 
while  the  poor  are  humble,  and  in  their  secret  hearts 
jealous  and  bitter;  in  other  words,  the  class  struggle  is 
in  the  churches,  as  everywhere  else  in  the  world,  and 
the  social  revolution  is  coming  in  the  churches,  just  as 
it  is  coming  in  industry. 

It  is  a  fact  of  deep  significance  that  the  majority  of 
ministers  are  proletarians,  eking  out  their  existence 
upon  a  miserable  salary,  and  beholden  in  all  their  com 
ings  and  goings  to  the  wealthy  holders  of  privilege. 
Even  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  that  is  true.  The 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  295 

ordinary  priest  is  a  man  of  the  working  class,  and 
knows  what  working  people  suffer  and  feel.  So  in  the 
Catholic  Church  there  are  proletarian  rebellions ;  there 
is  many  a  priest  who  does  not  carry  out  the  political  or 
ders  of  his  superiors,  but  goes  to  the  polls  and  votes  for 
his  class  instead  of  for  his  pope.  In  Ireland,  as  I  write, 
the  young  priests  are  defying  their  bishops  and  joining 
the  Sinn  Fein,  a  non-religious  movement  for  an  Irish 
Republic. 

What  is  it  that  keeps  the  average  workingman  in 
subjection  to  the  exploiter?  Simply  terror,  the  terror 
of  losing  his  job.  And  if  you  could  get  into  the  inmost 
soul  of  Christian  ministers,  you  would  find  that  pre 
cisely  the  same  force  is  keeping  many  of  them  slaves  to 
Tradition.  They  are  educated  men,  and  thousands  of 
them  must  resent  the  dilemma  which  compels  them  to 
be  either  fools  or  hypocrites.  They  have  caught  enough 
of  the  spirit  of  their  time  not  to  enjoy  having  to  pose  as 
miracle-mongers,  rain-makers  and  witch-doctors;  they 
would  like  to  say  frankly  that  they  do  not  believe  that 
Jonah  ever  swallowed  the  whale,  and  even  that  they 
are  dubious  about  Hercules  and  Achilles  and  other  dem 
igods.  But  they  are  part  of  a  machine,  and  the  old  men 
and  the  rich  men  who  run  the  machine  have  laid  down 
the  law.  Those  who  find  themselves  tempted  to  think, 
remember  suddenly  that  they  have  wives  and  children ; 
they  have  only  one  profession,  they  have  been  unfitted 
for  any  other  by  a  life-time  of  study  of  dead  things,  as 
well  as  by  the  practice  of  altruism. 

But  now  the  Social  Revolution  is  coming;  coming 
upon  swift  wings — it  may  be  here  before  this  book  sees 
the  light.  And  who  knows  but  then  we  may  see  in 


296  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

America  that  wonderful  sight  which  we  saw  in  Russia, 
when  Christian  monks  assembled  and  burned  their  holy 
books,  and  petitioned  the  state  to  take  them  in  as  cit 
izens  and  human  beings  ?  It  is  my  belief  that  when  the 
power  of  exploitation  is  broken,  we  shall  see  the  Dead 
Hand  crumble  into  dust,  as  a  mummy  crumbles  when  it 
is  exposed  to  the  air.  All  those  men  who  stay  in  the 
Church  and  pretend  to  believe  nonsense,  because  it  af 
fords  an  easy  way  to  earn  a  living,  will  suddenly  realize 
that  it  is  possible  to  earn  a  living  outside;  that  any 
man  can  go  into  a  factory,  clean  and  well-ventilated  and 
humanly  run,  and  by  four  hours  work  can  earn  the 
purchasing  power  of  ten  or  fifteen  dollars.  Do  you  not 
think  that  there  may  be  some  who  will  choose  freedom 
and  self-respect  on  those  terms? 

And  what  of  those  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands 
who  join  the  church  because  it  is  a  part  of  the  regime 
of  respectability,  a  way  to  make  the  acquaintance  of 
the  rich,  to  curry  favor  and  obtain  promotion,  to  get 
customers  if  you  are  a  tradesman,  to  extend  your  prac 
tice  if  you  are  a  professional  man?  And  what  about 
the  millions  who  go  to  church  because  they  are  poor, 
and  because  life  is  a  desperate  struggle,  and  this  is 
one  way  to  keep  the  favor  of  the  boss,  to  get  a  little 
better  chance  for  the  children,  to  get  charity  if  you  fall 
into  need;  in  short,  to  acquire  influence  with  the  well- 
to-do  and  powerful,  who  stand  together,  and  like  to  see 
the  poor  humble  and  reverent,  contented  in  that  state 
of  life  to  which  it  has  pleased  God  to  call  them  ? 

The  Church  Redeemed 

Do  I  mean  that  I  expect  to  see  the  Church — all 


THE  PROFITS   OF  RELIGION  297 

churches — perish  and  pass  away?  I  do  not,  for  I  be 
lieve  that  the  Church  answers  one  of  the  fundamental 
needs  of  man.  The  Social  Revolution  will  abolish  pov 
erty  and  parasitism  v,  it  will  make  temptations  fewer, 
and  the  soul's  path  through  life  much  easier;  but  it 
will  not  remove  the  necessity  of  struggle  for  individual 
virtue,  it  will  only  clear  the  way  for  the  discovery  of 
newer  and  higher  types  of  virtue.  Men  will  gather  more 
than  ever  in  beautiful  places  to  voice  their  love  of  life 
and  of  one  another;  but  the  places  in  which  they  gather 
will  be  places  swept  clean  of  superstition  and  tyranny. 
As  the  Reformation  compelled  the  Catholic  Church  to 
cleanse  itself  and  abolish  the  grossest  of  its  abuses,  so 
the  Social  Revolution  will  compel  it  to  repudiate  its 
defense  of  parasitism  and  exploitation.  I  will  record 
the  prophecy  that  by  the  year  1950  all  Catholic  author 
ities  will  be  denying  that  the  Church  ever  opposed 
Socialism — true  Socialism;  just  as  today  they  deny 
that  the  Church  ever  tortured  Galileo,  ever  burned 
men  for  teaching  that  the  earth  moves  around  the  sun, 
ever  sold  the  right  to  commit  crime,  ever  gave  away  the 
New  World  to  Spain  and  Portugal,  ever  buried  newly- 
born  infants  in  the  cellars  of  nunneries. 

The  Social  Revolution  will  compel  all  churches, 
Christian,  Hebrew,  Buddhist,  Confucian,  or  what  you 
will,  to  drive  out  their  formalists  and  traditionalists.  If 
there  is  any  church  that  refuses  so  to  adapt  itself,  the 
swift  progress  of  enlightenment  and  freedom  will  leave 
it  without  followers.  But  in  the  great  religions,  which 
have  a  soul  of  goodness  and  sincerity,  we  may  be  sure 
that  reformers  will  arise,  prophets  and  saints  who,  as  of 
old,  will  preach  the  living  word  of  God.  In  many 


298         THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

churches  today  we  can  see  the  beginning  of  that  new 
Counter-Reformation.  Even  in  the  Catholic  Church 
there  is  a  "modernist"  rebellion ;  read  the  books  of  the 
"Sillon",  and  Fogazzaro's  trilogy  of  novels,  "The 
Saint",  and  you  will  see  a  genuine  and  vital  protest 
against  the  economic  corruption  of  the  Church.  In 
America,  the  "Knights  of  Slavery"  have  been  forced  by 
public  pressure  to  support  a  "War  for  Democracy",  and 
even  to  compete  with  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  in  the  training 
camps.  They  are  doing  good  work,  I  am  told. 

This  gradual  conquest  of  the  old  religiosity  by  the 
spirit  of  modern  common  sense  is  shown  most  interest 
ingly  in  the  Salvation  Army.  William  Booth  was  a  man 
with  a  great  heart,  who  took  his  life  into  his  hands  and 
went  out  with  a  bass-drum  to  save  the  lost  souls  of  the 
slums.  He  was  stoned  and  jailed,  but  he  persisted,  and 
brought  his  captives  to  Jesus — 

Vermin-eaten  saints  with  mouldy  breath, 
Unwashed  legions  with  the  ways  of  death. 

Incidentally  the  "General"  learned  to  know  his  slum 
population.  He  had  not  wanted  to  engage  in  charity 
and  material  activities;  he  feared  hypocrisy  and  cor 
ruption.  But  in  his  writings  he  lets  us  see  how  utterly 
impossible  it  is  for  a  man  of  real  heart  to  do  anything 
for  the  souls  of  the  slum-dwellers  without  at  the  same 
time  helping  their  diseased  and  hunger-racked  bodies. 
So  the  Salvation  army  was  forced  into  useful  work — old 
clothes  depots,  nights  lodgings,  Christmas  dinners, 
farm  colonies — until  today  the  bare  list  of  the  various 
kinds  of  enterprises  it  carries  on  fills  three  printed 
pages.  It  is  all  done  with  the  money  of  the  rich,  and  is 
tainted  by  subservience  to  authority,  but  no  one  cart 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION          299 

deny  that  it  is  better  than  "Gibson's  Preservative", 
and  the  fox-hunting  parsons  filling  themselves  with 
port. 

And  in  Protestant  Churches  the  advance  has  been 
even  greater.  Here  and  there  you  will  find  a  real  rebel, 
hanging  onto  his  job  and  preaching  the  proletarian 
Jesus ;  while  even  the  great  Fifth  Avenue  churches  are 
making  attempts  at  "missions"  and  "settlements"  in 
the  slums.  The  more  vital  churches  are  gradually  turn 
ing  themselves  into  societies  for  the  practical  better 
ment  of  their  members.  Their  clergy  are  running  boys 
clubs  and  sewing-schools  for  girls,  food  conservation 
lectures  for  mothers,  social  study  clubs  for  men.  You 
get  prayer-meetings  and  psalm-singing  along  with  this ; 
but  here  is  the  fact  that  hangs  always  before  the 
clergyman's  face — that  with  prayer-meetings  and 
psalm-singing  alone  he  has  a  hard  time,  while  with 
clubs  and  educational  societies  and  social  reforms  he 
thrives. 

And  now  the  War  has  broken  upon  the  world,  and 
caught  the  churches,  like  everything  else,  in  its  mighty 
current ;  the  clergy  and  the  congregations  are  confront 
ed  by  pressing  national  needs,  they  are  forced  to  take 
notice  of  a  thousand  new  problems,  to  engage  in  a  thou 
sand  practical  activities.  No  one  can  see  the  end  of  this 
— any  more  than  he  can  see  the  end  of  the  vast  up 
heaval  in  politics  and  industry.  But  we  who  are  trained 
in  revolutionary  thought  can  see  the  main  outlines  of 
the  future.  We  see  that  in  these  new  church  activities 
the  clergy  are  inspired  by  things  read,  not  in  ancient 
Hebrew  texts,  but  in  the  daily  newspapers.  They  are 
responding  to  the  actual,  instant  needs  of  their  boys  in 


300  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

the  trenches  and  the  camps ;  and  this  is  bound  to  have 
an  effect  upon  their  psychology.  Just  as  we  can  say 
that  an  English  girl  who  leaves  the  narrow  circle  of 
her  old  life,  and  goes  into  a  munition  factory  and  joins 
a  union  and  takes  part  in  its  debates,  will  never  after 
be  a  docile  home-slave ;  so  we  can  say  that  the  clergy 
man  who  helps  in  Y.  M.  C.  A.  work  in  France,  or  in  Red 
Cross  organization  in  America,  will  be  less  the  bigot 
and  formalist  forever  after.  He  will  have  learned,  in 
spite  of  himself,  to  adjust  means  to  ends ;  he  will  have 
learned  co-operation  and  social  solidarity  by  the  method 
which  modern  educators  most  favor — by  doing.  Also 
he  will  have  absorbed  a  mass  of  ideas  in  news  des 
patches  from  over  the  world.  He  is  forced  to  read  these 
despatches  carefully,  because  the  fate  of  his  own  boys 
is  involved ;  and  we  Socialists  will  see  to  it  that  the  des 
patches  are  well  filled  with  propaganda ! 

The  Desire  of  Nations 

So  the  churches,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  are 
caught  in  the  great  revolutionary  current,  and  swept  on 
towards  a  goal  which  they  do  not  forsee,  and  from 
which  they  would  shrink  in  dismay :  the  Church  of  the 
future,  the  Church  redeemed  by  the  spirit  of  Brother 
hood,  the  Church  which  we  Socialists  will  join.  They 
call  us  materialists,  and  say  that  we  think  about  noth 
ing  but  the  belly — and  that  is  true,  in  a  way ;  because 
we  are  the  representatives  of  a  starving  class,  which 
thinks  about  its  belly  precisely  as  does  any  individual 
who  is  ravening  with  hunger.  But  give  us  what  that 
arrant  materialist,  James,  the  brother  of  Jesus,  calls 
"those  things  which  are  needful  to  the  body,"  and  then 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  301 

we  will  use  our  minds,  and  even  discover  that  we  have 
souls ;  whereas  at  present  we  are  led  to  despise  the  very 
word  "spiritual",  which  has  become  the  stock-in-trade 
of  parasites  and  poseurs. 

We  have  children,  whom  we  love,  and  whose  future 
is  precious  to  us.  We  would  be  glad  to  have  them 
trained  in  ways  of  decency  and  self-control,  of  dignity 
and  grace.  It  would  make  us  happy  if  there  were  in  the 
world  institutions  conducted  by  men  and  women  of  con 
secrated  life  who  would  specialize  in  teaching  a  true 
morality  to  the  young.  But  it  must  be  a  morality  of 
freedom,  not  of  slavery ;  a  morality  founded  upon  rea 
son,  not  upon  superstition.  The  men  who  teach  it  must 
be  men  who  know  what  truth  is,  and  the  passionate 
loyalty  which  the  search  for  truth  inspires.  They  can 
not  be  the  pitiful  shufflers  and  compromisers  we  see  in 
the  churches  today,  the  Jowetts  who  say  they  used  to 
believe  in  the  Father,  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Rather  than  trust  our  children  to  such  shameless  cyn 
ics,  we  will  make  shift  to  train  them  ourselves — we  am 
ateurs,  not  knowing  much  about  children,  and  absorbed 
in  the  desperate  struggle  against  organized  wrong. 

It  is  a  statement  which  many  revolutionists 
would  resent,  yet  it  is  a  fact  nevertheless,  that  we  need 
a  new  religion,  need  it  just  as  badly  as  any  of  the  rest 
of  our  pitifully  groping  race.  That  we  need  it  is  proven 
by  the  rivalries  and  quarrels  in  our  midst — the  schisms 
which  waste  the  greater  part  of  our  activities,  and 
which  are  often  the  result  of  personal  jealousies  and 
petty  vanities.  To  lift  men  above  such  weakness,  to 
make  them  really  brothers  in  a  great  cause- — that  is  the 


302  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

work  of  "personal  religion"  in  the  true  and  vital  sense 
of  the  words. 

We  pioneers  and  propagandists  may  not  live  to  see 
the  birth  of  the  new  Church  of  Humanity ;  but  our  chil 
dren  will  see  it,  and  the  dream  of  it  is  in  our  hearts ; 
our  poets  have  sung  of  it  with  fervor  and  conviction. 
Read  these  lines  from  "The  Desire  of  Nations,"  by  Ed 
win  Markham,  in  which  he  tells  of  the  new  Redeemer 
who  is  at  hand: 

And  when  he  comes  into  the  world  gone  wrong, 
He  will  rebuild  her  beauty  with  a  song. 
To  every  heart  he  will  its  own  dream  be: 
One  moon  has  many  phantoms  in  the  sea. 
Out  of  the  North  the  norns  will  cry  to  men: 

"Baldur  the  Beautiful  has  come  again!" 
The  flutes  of  Greece  will  whisper  from  the  dead: 

"Apollo  has  unveiled  his  sunbright  head!" 
The  stones  of  Thebes  and  Memphis  will  find  voice: 

"Osiris  comes:   Oh  tribes  of  Time,  rejoice!" 
And  social  architects  who  build  the  State, 
Serving  the  Dream  at  citadel  and  gate, 
Will  hail  Him  coming  through  the  labor-hum. 
And  glad  quick  cries  will  go  from  man  to  man: 

"Lo,  He  has  come,  our  Christ  the  artisan, 
The  King  who  loved  the  lilies,  He  has  come!" 

The  Knowable 

The  new  religion  will  base  itself  upon  the  facts  of 
life,  as  demonstrated  by  experience  and  reason ;  for  to 
the  modern  thinker  the  basis  of  all  interest  is  truth,  and 
the  wonders  of  the  microscope  and  the  telescope,  of  the 
new  psychology  and  the  new  sociology  are  more  won 
derful  than  all  the  magic  recorded  in  ancient  Mythol 
ogies.  And  even  if  this  were  not  so,  the  business  of  the 
thinker  is  to  follow  the  facts.  The  history  of  all  philos-r 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  303 

ophy  might  be  summed  up  in  this  simile:  The  infant 
opens  his  eyes  and  sees  the  moon,  and  stretches  out  his 
hands  and  cries  for  it ;  but  those  in  charge  do  not  give 
it  to  him,  and  so  after  a  while  the  infant  tires  of  crying, 
and  turns  to  his  mother's  breast  and  takes  a  drink  of 
milk. 

Man  demands  to  know  the  origin  of  life ;  it  is  intol 
erable  for  him  to  be  here,  and  not  know  how,  or  whence, 
or  why.  He  demands  the  knowledge  immediately  and 
finally,  and  invents  innumerable  systems  and  creeds. 
He  makes  himself  believe  them,  with  fire  and  torture 
makes  other  men  believe  them ;  until  finally,  in  the  con^ 
fusion  of  a  million  theories,  it  occurs  to  him  to  invest^ 
gate  his  instruments,  and  he  makes  the  discovery  that 
his  tools  are  inadequate,  and  all  their  products  worth 
less.  His  mind  is  finite,  while  the  thing  he  seeks  is  in 
finite  ;  his  knowledge  is  relative,  while  the  First  Cause 
is  absolute. 

This  realization  we  owe  to  Immanuel  Kant,  the 
father  of  modern  philosophy.  In  his  famous  "antin 
omies",  he  proved  four  propositions:  first,  that  the 
universe  is  limitless  in  time  and  space;  second,  that 
matter  is  composed  of  simple,  indivisible  elements; 
third,  that  free  will  is  impossible;  and  fourth,  that 
there  must  be  an  absolute  or  first  cause.  And  having 
proven  these  things,  he  turned  round  and  proved  their 
opposites,  with  arguments  exactly  as  unanswerable. 
Any  one  who  follows  these  demonstrations  and  under 
stands  them,  takes  all  his  metaphysical  learning  and 
lays  it  on  the  shelf  with  his  astrology  and  magic. 

It  is  a  fact,  which  every  one  who  wishes  to  think 
must  get  clear,  that  when  you  are  dealing  with 


304  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

lutes  and  ultimates,  you  can  prove  whatever  you  want 
to  prove.  Metaphysics  is  like  the  fourth  dimension; 
you  fly  into  it  and  come  back  upside  down,  hindside 
foremost,  inside  out;  and  when  you  get  tired  of  this 
condition,  you  take  another  flight,  and  come  back  the 
way  you  were  before.  So  metaphysical  thinking  serves 
the  purpose  of  Catholic  cheats  like  Cardinal  Newman 
and  Professor  Chatterton-Hill ;  it  serves  hysterical 
women  like  "Mother"  Eddy;  it  serves  the  New- 
thoughters,  who  wish  to  fill  their  bellies  with  wind ;  it 
serves  the  charlatans  and  mystagogs  who  wish  to  be 
fuddle  the  wits  of  the  populace.  Real  thinkers  avoid 
it  as  they  would  a  bottomless  swamp ;  they  avoid,  not 
merely  the  idealism  of  Platonists  and  Hegelians,  but 
the  monism  of  Haeckel,  and  the  materialism  of  Buech- 
ner  and  Jacques  Loeb.  The  simple  fact  is  that  it  is  as 
impossible  to  prove  the  priority  of  origin  and  the  ulti 
mate  nature  of  matter  as  it  is  of  mind;  so  that  the 
scientist  who  lays  down  a  materialist  dogma  is  exactly 
as  credulous  as  a  Christian. 

How  then  are  we  to  proceed?  Shall  we  erect  the 
mystery  into  an  Unknowable,  like  Spencer,  and  call 
ourselves  Agnostics  with  a  capital  letter,  like  Huxley? 
Shall  we  follow  Frederic  Harrison,  making  an  inade 
quate  divinity  out  of  our  impotence?  I  have  read  the 
books  of  the  "Positivists",  and  attended  their  imitation 
church  in  London,  but  I  did  not  get  any  satisfaction 
from  them.  In  the  midst  of  their  dogmatic  pronounce 
ments  I  found  myself  remembering  how  the  egg  falls 
apart  and  reveals  a  chicken,  how  the  worm  suddenly 
discovers  itself  a  butterfly.  The  spirit  of  man  is  a 
breaker  of  barriers,  and  it  seems  a  futile  occupation  to 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  305 

set  limits  upon  the  future.  Our  business  is  not  to  say 
what  men  will  know  ten  thousand  years  from  now,  but 
to  content  ourselves  with  the  simple  statement  of  what 
men  know  now.  What  we  know  is  a  procession  of  phe 
nomena  called  an  environment ;  our  life  being  an  act  of 
adjustment  to  its  changes,  and  our  faith  being  the  con 
viction  that  this  adjustment  is  possible  and  worth 
while. 

In  the  beginning  the  guide  is  instinct,  and  the  act 
of  trust  is  automatic.  But  with  the  dawn  of  reason  the 
thinker  has  to  justify  his  faith;  to  convince  himself 
that  life  is  sincere,  that  there  is  worth-whileness  in  be 
ing,  or  in  seeking  to  be ;  that  there  is  order  in  creation, 
laws  which  can  be  discovered,  processes  which  can  be 
applied.  Just  as  the  babe  trusts  life  when  it  gropes  for 
its  mother's  breast,  so  the  most  skeptical  of  scientists 
trusts  it  when  he  declares  that  water  is  made  of  two 
parts  hydrogen  and  one  part  oxygen,  and  sets  it  down 
for  a  certainty  that  this  will  always  be  so — that  he  is 
not  being  played  with  by  some  sportive  demon,  who 
will  today  cause  H20  to  behave  like  water,  and  tomor 
row  like  benzine. 

Nature's  Insurgent  Son 

Life  has  laws,  which  it  is  possible  to  ascertain ;  and 
with  each  bit  of  knowledge  acquired,  the  environment 
is  changed,  the  life  becomes  a  new  thing.  Consider,  for 
example,  what  a  different  place  the  world  became  to 
the  man  who  discovered  that  the  force  which  laid  the 
forest  in  ashes  could  be  tamed  and  made  to  warm  a 
ycave  and  make  wild  grains  nutritious !  In  other  words, 
man  can  create  life,  he  can  make  the  world  and  him- 

20 


306  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

self  into  that  which  his  reason  decides  it  ought  to  be, 
The  means  by  which  he  does  this  is  the  most  magical 
of  all  the  tools  he  has  invented  since  his  arboreal  an 
cestor  made  the  first  club;  the  tool  of  experimental 
science — and  when  one  considers  that  this  weapon  has 
been  understood  and  deliberately  employed  for  but  two 
or  three  centuries,  he  realizes  that  we  are  indeed  only 
at  the  beginning  of  human  evolution. 

To  take  command  of  life,  to  replace  instincts  by  rea 
soned  and  deliberate  acts,  to  make  the  world  a  con 
scious  and  ordered  product — that  is  the  task  of  man. 
Sir  Ray  Lankester  has  set  this  forth  with  beautiful 
precision  in  his  book,  "The  Kingdom  of  Man".  We  are, 
at  this  time,  in  an  uncomfortable  and  dangerous  tran 
sition  stage,  as  a  child  playing  with  explosives.  This 
child  has  found  out  how  to  alter  his  environment  in 
many  startling  ways,  but  he  does  not  yet  know  why  he 
wishes  to  alter  it,  nor  to  what  purpose.  He  finds  that 
certain  things  are  uncomfortable,  and  these  he  proceeds 
immediately  to  change.  Discovering  that  grain  fer 
mented  dispels  boredom,  he  creates  a  race  of  drunk 
ards  ;  discovering  that  foods  can  be  produced  in  pro 
fusion,  and  prepared  in  alluring  combinations,  he  makes 
himself  so  many  diseases  that  it  takes  an  encyclopedia 
to  tell  about  them.  Discovering  that  captives  taken  in 
war  can  be  made  to  work,  he  makes  a  procession  of  em 
pires,  which  are  eaten  through  with  luxury  and  cor 
ruption,  and  fall  into  ruins  again. 

This  is  Nature's  way;  she  produces  without  limit, 
groping  blindly,  experimenting  ceaselessly,  eliminating 
ruthlessly.  It  takes  a  million  eggs  to  produce  one 
salmon;  it  has  taken  a  million  million  men  to  produce 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  307 

one  idea — algebra,  or  the  bow  and  arrow,  or  democracy. 
Nature's  present  impulse  appears  as  a  rebellion  against 
her  own  methods;  man,  her  creature,  will  emancipate 
himself  from  her  law,  will  save  himself  from  her  blind 
ness  and  her  ruthlessness.  He  is  "Nature's  insurgent 
son";  but,  being  the  child  of  his  mother,  goes  at  the 
tesk  in  her  old  blundering  way.  Some  men  are  sched 
uled  to  elimination  because  of  defective  eyesight ;  they 
are  furnished  with  glasses,  and  the  breeding  of  defec 
tive  eyes  begins.  The  sickly  or  imbecile  child  would  per 
ish  at  once  in  the  course  of  Nature ;  it  is  saved  in  the 
name  of  charity,  and  a  new  line  of  degenerates  is 
started. 

What  shall  we  do?  Return  to  the  method  of  the 
Spartans,  exposing  our  sickly  infants  ?  We  do  not  have 
to  do  anything  so  wasteful,  because  we  can  replace  the 
killing  of  the  unfit  by  a  scientific  breeding  which 
will  prevent  the  unfit  from  getting  a  chance  at  life. 
We  can  replace  instinct  by  self -discipline.  We  can  sub 
stitute  for  the  regime  of  "Nature  red  in  tooth  and  claw 
with  ravin"  the  regime  of  man  the  creator,  knowing 
what  he  wishes  to  be  and  how  to  set  about  to  be  it. 
Whether  this  can  happen,  whether  the  thing  which 
we  call  civilization  is  to  be  the  great  triumph  of  the 
ages,  or  whether  the  human  race  is  to  go  back  into  the 
melting  pot,  is  a  question  being  determined  by  an  infin 
itude  of  contests  between  enlightenment  and  ignor 
ance  :  precisely  such  a  contest  as  occurs  now,  when  you, 
the  reader,  encounter  a  man  who  has  thought  his  way 
out  to  the  light,  and  comes  to  urge  you  to  perform  the 
act  of  self -emancipation,  to  take  up  the  marvellous  new 
tools  of  science,  and  to  make  yourself,  by  means  of 


308  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

exact  knowledge,  the  creator  of  your  own  life  and  in 
part  of  the  life  of  the  race. 

The  New  Morality 

Life  is  a  process  of  expansion,  of  the  unfoldment  of 
new  powers;  driven  by  that  inner  impulse  which  the 
philosophers  of  Pragmatism  call  the  elan  vital.  When 
ever  this  impulse  has  its  way,  there  is  an  emotion  of 
joy ;  whenever  it  is  balked,  there  is  one  of  distress.  So 
pleasure  and  pain  are  the  guides  of  life,  and  the  final 
goal  is  a  condition  of  free  and  constantly  accelerating 
growth,  in  which  joy  is  enduring. 

That  man  will  ever  reach  such  a  state  is  more  than 
we  can  say.  It  is  a  perfectly  conceivable  thing  that  to 
morrow  a  comet  may  fall  upon  the  earth  and  wipe  out 
all  man's  labor's.  But  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  conceiv 
able  thing  that  man  may  some  day  learn  to  control  the 
movements  of  comets,  and  even  of  starry  systems.  It 
seems  certain  that  if  he  is  given  time,  he  will  make  him 
self  master  of  the  forces  of  his  immediate  environ 
ment — 

The  untamed  giants  of  nature  shall  bow  down — 
The  tides,  the  tempest  and  the  lightning  cease 
From  mockery  and  destruction,  and  be  turned 
Unto  the  making  of  the  soul  of  man. 

It  is  a  conceivable  thing  that  man  may  learn  to  cre 
ate  his  food  from  the  elements  without  the  slow  pro 
cesses  of  agriculture;  it  is  conceivable  that  he  may 
master  the  bacteria  which  at  present  prey  upon  his 
body,  and  so  put  an  end  to  death.  It  is  certain  that  he 
will  ascertain  the  laws  of  heredity,  and  create  human 
qualities  as  he  has  created  the  spurs  of  the  fighting- 
cock  and  the  legs  of  the  greyhound.  He  will  find  out 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  309 

what  genius  is,  and  the  laws  of  its  being,  and  the  tests 
whereby  it  may  be  recognized.  In  the  new  science  of 
psycho-analysis  he  has  already  begun  the  work  of 
bringing  an  infinity  of  subconsciousness  into  the  light 
of  day;  it  may  be  that  in  the  evidence  of  telepathy 
which  the  psychic  researchers  are  accumulating,  he  is 
beginning  to  grope  his  way  into  a  universal  conscious 
ness,  which  may  come  to  include  the  joys  and  griefs 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Mars,  and  of  the  dark  stars  which 
the  spectroscope  and  the  telescope  are  disclosing. 

All  these  are  fascinating  possibilities.  What  stands 
in  the  way  of  their  realization?  Ignorance  and  super 
stition,  fear  and  submission,  the  old  habits  of  rapine 
and  hatred  which  man  has  brought  with  him  from  his 
animal  past.  These  make  him  a  slave,  a  victim  of  him 
self  and  of  others ;  to  root  them  out  of  the  garden  of  the 
soul  is  the  task  of  the  modern  thinker. 

The  new  morality  is  thus  a  morality  of  freedom.  It 
teaches  that  man  is  the  master,  or  shall  become  so; 
that  there  is  no  law,  save  the  law  of  his  own  being,  no 
check  upon  his  will  save  that  which  he  himself  im 
poses. 

The  new  morality  is  a  morality  of  joy.  It  teaches 
that  true  pleasure  is  the  end  of  being,  and  the  test  of 
all  righteousness. 

The  new  morality  is  a  morality  of  reason.  It  teaches 
that  there  is  no  authority  above  reason;  no  possibility 
of  such  authority,  because  if  such  were  to  appear,  rea 
son  would  have  to  judge  it,  and  accept  or  reject  it. 

The  new  morality  is  a  morality  of  development.  It 
teaches  that  there  can  no  more  be  an  immutable  law  of 
conduct,  than  there  can  be  an  immutable  position  for 


310  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

the  steering-wheel  of  an  aeroplane.  The  business  of  the 
pilot  of  an  aeroplane  is  to  keep  his  machine  aloft  amid 
shifting  currents  of  wind.  The  business  of  a  moralist  is 
to  adjust  life  to  a  constantly  changing  environment. 
An  action  which  was  suicide  yesterday  becomes  hero 
ism  today,  and  futility  or  hypocrisy  tomorrow. 

This  new  morality,  like  all  things  in  a  world  of 
strife,  is  fighting  for  existence,  using  its  own  weapons, 
which  are  reason  and  love.  Obviously  it  can  use  no 
others,  without  self-destruction;  yet  it  has  to  meet 
enemies  who  fight  with  the  old  weapons  of  force  and 
fraud.  Whether  it  will  prevail  is  more  than  any  prophet 
can  say.  Perhaps  it  is  too  much  to  ask  that  it  should 
succeed — this  insolent  effort  of  the  pigmy  man  to  leap 
upon  the  back  of  his  master  and  fit  a  bridle  into  his 
mouth.  Perhaps  it  is  nothing  but  a  dream  in  the  minds 
of  a  few,  the  scientists  and  poets  and  inventors,  the 
dreamers  of  the  race.  Perhaps  the  nerve  of  the  pigmy 
will  fail  him  at  the  critical  moment,  and  he  will  fall 
from  the  back  of  his  master,  and  under  his  master's 
hoofs. 

The  hour  of  the  decision  is  now ;  f 6r  this  we  can  see 
plainly,  and  as  scientists  we  can  proclaim  it — the 
human  race  is  in  a  swift  current  of  degeneration, 
which  a  new  morality  alone  can  check.  The  struggle  is 
at  its  height  in  our  time ;  if  it  fails,  if  the  fibre  of  the 
race  continues  to  deteriorate,  the  soul  of  the  race  to 
be  eaten  out  by  poverty  and  luxury,  by  insanity  and 
disease,  by  prostitution,  crime  and  war — then  mankind 
will  slip  back  into  the  abyss,  the  untamed  giants  of 
Nature  will  resume  their  ancient  sway,  and  the  tides, 
the  tempest  and  the  lightning  will  sweep  the  earth 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  311 

clean  again.  I  do  not  believe  that  this  calamity  will 
befall  us.  I  know  that  in  the  diseased  social  body  the 
forces  of  resistance  are  gathering — the  Socialist  move 
ment,  in  the  broad  sense — the  activities  of  all  who  be 
lieve  in  the  possibility  of  reconstructing  society  upon 
a  basis  of  reason,  justice  and  love.  To  such  people  this 
book  goes  out :  to  the  truly  religious  people,  those  who 
hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness  here  and  now, 
who  believe  in  brotherhood  as  a  reality,  and  are  willing 
to  bear  pain  and  ridicule  and  privation  for  the  sake  of 
its  ultimate  achievement. 

From  the  edge  of  harsh  derision, 

From  discord  and  defeat, 
From  doubt  and  lame  division, 

We  pluck  the  fruit  and  eat; 

And  the  mouth  finds  it  bitter,  and  the  spirit  sweet. . . . 
O  sorrowing  hearts  of  slaves, 

We  heard  you  beat  from  far! 
We  bring  the  light  that  saves, 

We  bring  the  morning  star; 

Freedom's  good  things  we  bring  you,  whence  all  good  things 
are .... 

Envoi 

I  have  come  to  the  end  of  my  task ;  but  one  question 
troubles  me.  I  think  of  the  "young  men  and  maidens 
meek"  who  will  read  this  book,  and  I  wonder  what  they 
will  make  of  it.  We  have  had  a  lark  together ;  we  have 
gone  romping  down  the  vista  of  the  ages,  swatting 
every  venerable  head  that  showed  itself,  beating  the 
dust  out  of  ancient  delusions.  You  would  like  all  your 
life  to  be  that  kind  of  lark ;  but  you  may  not  find  it  so, 
and  perhaps  you  will  suffer  disillusionment  and  vex 
ation. 


312  THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION 

I  have  known  hundreds  of  young  radicals  in  my  life ; 
they  have  nearly  all  been  gallant  and  honest,  but  they 
have  not  all  been  wise,  and  therefore  not  so  happy  as 
they  might  have  been.  In  the  course  of  time  I  have 
formulated  to  myself  the  peril  to  which  young  radicals 
are  exposed.  We  see  so  much  that  is  wrong  in  ancient 
things,  it  gets  to  be  a  habit  with  us  to  reject  them. 
We  have  only  to  know  that  a  thing  is  old  to  feel  an 
impulse  of  impatient  scorn ;  on  the  other  hand,  we  are 
tempted  to  welcome  anything  which  can  prove  itself  to 
be  unprecedented.  There  is  a  common  type  of  radical 
whose  aim  in  life  is  to  be  several  jumps  ahead  of  man 
kind;  whose  criterion  of  conduct  is  that  it  shocks  the 
bourgeois.  If  you  do  not  know  that  type,  you  may  find 
him — and  her — in  the  newest  of  the  Bohemian  cafes, 
drinking  the  newest  red  chemicals,  smoking  the 
newest  brand  of  cigarettes,  and  discussing  the  newest 
form  of  psycopathia  sexualis.  After  you  have  watched 
them  a  while,  you  realize  that  these  ultra-new  people 
have  fallen  victim  to  the  oldest  form  of  logical  fallacy, 
the  non  sequitur,  and  likewise  to  the  oldest  form  of 
slavery,  which  is  self-indulgence. 

If  it  is  true  that  much  in  the  old  moral  codes  is 
based  upon  ignorance,  and  cultivated  by  greed,  it  is 
also  true  that  much  in  the  old  moral  codes  is  based  upon 
facts  which  will  not  change  so  long  as  man  is  what  he 
is — a  creature  of  impulses,  good  and  bad,  wise  and  fool 
ish,  selfish  and  generous,  and  compelled  to  make  choice 
between  these  impulses;  so  long  as  he  is  a  material 
body  and  a  personal  consciousness,  obliged  to  live  in  so 
ciety  and  adjust  himself  to  the  rights  of  others.  What 
I  would  like  to  say  to  young  radicals — if  there  is  any 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  313 

way  to  say  it  without  seeming  a  prig — is  that  in  choos 
ing  their  own  path  through  life,  they  will  need  not 
merely  enthusiasm  and  radical  fervor,  but  wisdom  and 
judgment  and  hard  study. 

It  is  our  fundamental  demand  that  society  shall 
cease  to  repeat  over  and  over  the  blunders  of  the  past, 
the  blunders  of  tyranny  and  slavery,  of  luxury  and  pov 
erty,  which  wrecked  the  ancient  societies;  and  surely 
it  is  a  poor  way  to  begin  by  repeating  in  our  own  per 
sons  the  most  ancient  blunders  of  the  moral  life.  To 
light  the  fires  of  lust  in  our  hearts,  and  let  them 
smoulder  there,  and  imagine  we  are  trying  new  experi 
ments  in  psychology!  Who  does  not  know  the  radical 
woman  who  demonstrates  her  emancipation  from  con 
vention  by  destroying  her  nerves  with  nicotine?  Who 
does  not  know  the  genius  of  revolt  who  demonstrates 
his  repudiation  of  private  property  by  permitting  his 
lady  loves  to  support  him  ?  Who  does  not  know  the  man 
who  finds  in  the  phrases  of  revolution  the  most  effective 
devices  for  the  seducing  of  young  girls  ? 

You  will  have  read  this  book  to  ill  purpose  if  you 
draw  the  conclusion  that  there  is  anything  in  it  to 
spare  you  the  duty  of  getting  yourself  moral  standards 
and  holding  yourself  to  them.  On  the  contrary,  because 
your  task  is  the  highest  and  hardest  that  man  has  yet 
undertaken — for  this  reason  you  will  need  standards 
the  most  exacting  ever  formulated.  Let  me  quote  some 
words  from  a  teacher  you  will  not  accuse  of  holding  to 
the  slave-moralities : 

Free  dost  thou  call  thyself?    Thy  ruling  thoughts  will  I 
hear,  and  not  that  thou  hast  escaped  a  yoke. 
Art  thou  such  a  one  that  can  escape  a  yoke  ? 


314  THE  PROFITS  or  RELIGION 

Free  from  what?  What  is  that  to  Zarathustra!  Clear  shall 
your  eye  tell  me:  free  to  what? 

Canst  thou  give  to  thyself  thy  good  and  thine  evil,  and  hang 
thy  will  above  thee  as  thy  law  ?  Canst  thou  be  thine  own  judge, 
and  avenger  of  thy  law  ? 

Fearful  it  is  to  be  alone  with  the  judge  and  the  avenger  of 
thy  law.  So  is  a  stone  flung  out  into  empty  space  and  into  the 
icy  breath  of  isolation. 

y  Out  of  the  pit  of  ignorance  and  despair  we  emerge 
into  the  sunlight  of  knowledge,  to  take  control  of  a 
world,  and  to  make  it  over,  not  according  to  the  will 
of  any  gods,  but  according  to  the  law  in  our  own  hearts. 
For  that  task  we  have  need  of  all  the  resources  of  our 
being;  of  courage  and  high  devotion,  of  faith  in  our 
selves  and  our  comrades,  of  clean,  straight  thinking,  of 
discipline  both  of  body  and  mind.  We  go  to  this  task 
with  a  knowledge  as  old  as  the  first  moral  impulse  of 
mankind — the  knowledge  that  our  actions  determine 
the  future  of  life,  not  merely  for  ourselves  but  for  all 
the  race.  For  this  is  one  of  the  laws  of  the  ancient  He 
brews  which  modern  science  has  not  repealed,  but  on 
the  contrary  has  reinforced  with  a  thousand  confirma 
tions — that  the  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited  upon  the 
children  unto  the  third  and  fourth  generations. 

I  get  letters  from  the  readers  of  my  books ;  nearly 
always  they  are  young  people,  so  I  feel  like  the  father 
of  a  large  family.  I  gather  them  now  about  my  knee, 
and  pronounce  upon  them  a  benediction  in  the  ancient 
patriarchal  style.  Children  and  grandchildren  of  my 
hopes,  for  ages  men  suffered  and  fought,  so  that 
the  world  might  be  turned  over  to  you.  Now  the  day 
is  coming,  the  glad,  new  day  which  blinds  us  with  the 
shining  of  its  wings ;  it  is  coming  so  swiftly  that  I  am 


THE  PROFITS  OF  RELIGION  315 

afraid  of  it.  I  thought  we  should  have  more  time  to  get 
ready  for  the  taking  over  of  the  world!  But  the  old 
managers  of  it  went  insane,  they  took  to  tearing  each 
other's  eyes  out,  and  now  they  lie  dead  about  us.  So, 
whether  we  will  or  not,  we  have  to  take  charge  of  the 
world ;  we  have  to  decide  what  to  do  with  it,  even  while 
we  are  doing  it.  Let  us  not  fail,  young  comrades ;  let  us 
not  write  on  the  scroll  of  history  that  mankind  had  to 
go  through  yet  new  generations  of  wars  and  tumults 
and  enslavements,  because  the  youth  of  the  interna 
tional  revolution  could  not  lift  themselves  above  those 
ancient  personal  vices  which  wrecked  the  fair  hopes  of 
their  fathers — bigotry  and  intolerance,  vindictiveness 
and  vanity,  envy,  hatred  and  malice  and  all  unchar- 
itableness ! 


INDEX 


Page 

Abbott,  Lyman    175-191 

Abbott,   L.    F 189 

Adams  214 

Adventists 237 

Amberley 52 

Anglican  Church 47-88 

Appeal  to  Reason 144 

Archer  133 

Assyria    32 

Atkinson   267 

Austria 155 

Aztecs 32 


Babists 254 

Babylonia   26,  32,  50 

Baxter  183 

Beilhardt 254 

Berkman   288 

Besant   256 

Bible-students    246 

Bismarck 153 

Black  Magic    253 

Blavatsky 23,  256 

Blougram 109 

Bonzano   121,  126 

Booth 298 

Bootstrap-lifting    11,  266 

Brougher 209 

Brown    268 

Buchanan 68,  159 

Buckle   41 

Burns     75 


Caesar  161 

Cannon 143 

Carlyle 163 

Carnegie    177 

Catholic  Church. 27,  105-157,  295 
Catholic  Encyclopedia 67 


Page 

Centrum 152 

Charcot    258 

Chatterton-Hill • 220 

Chinese 74 

Christian  Endeavor  World.  .  .216 

Christian  Science 254-264 

Churchman 101,  102 

Clark    23 

Clough  235 

Columbus 115 

Conway 127 

Curates    71 

D 

Darwin 56 

Day    205 

Debs 289 

Dixon    204,  205 

Dowie 242 

Durham  80 

E 

Eastman 140 

Eddy 257,  261 

Education  81 

England 49,  73,  75 

England,   Church  of 47-88 

Episcopal  Church 89-102 

Eucharist 59 


Ferrer 51,  133 

Fish   65 

Flint   78,  79 

Fogazzaro    298 

Foraker   143 

Frederick.  163 


Galileo    51 

Gallipoli    61 

Garrison    167 


Gladstone  57,  58,  81 

Goldman    287 

Goode   59,  61 

Green 63 

Gurney 254 


Hagen   219 

Hale 213 

Hammurabi 85 

Hampton 181 

Ha'nish    250 

Hanna 122,  142,  153,  213 

Harris   72 

Harrison    304 

Haywood 288 

Hebrew 36,  173,  284,  285 

Henry  the  Eighth 66,  67 

Hill,  Joe  219 

Hill,  Rev.  J.  W 204 

Holmes    276 

Holy  Rollers   242,  243 

Hubbard   190 

Huss   38,  41 

Huxley   56,  58 

Hyndman    256 

Hyslop 223 


Inquisition 39,  51 

Ireland    43 

Isaiah 287 


Janet  258 

Jastrow 32 

Jehovah    35,  36 

Jesuits 148 

Jesus 74,  100,  101,  161, 

172,  174,  175,  176,  197,  221, 
258,    281,    282,    290,    291,    292 

Jews   284,  286 

Job 25,  26,  55 

Joshua 37 

Jowett  54 

Jungle 190,  194,  197 

Junker 152 


Page 

Kaiser    164-166 

Kant    303 

Kemp 19 

King  Coal 137 

Kingsley    34 

Knights  of  Columbus 123 

Koreshanity    248 


La  Toilette 260 

Landor 34 

Lankester    306 

Lea 39 

Lecky 136 

Leo  XIII 119,  123 

Ligouri    174 

Li  Hung  Chang 75 

London    276 

Los  Angeles.149,  150,208,209,217 

L.  A.  Examiner 149 

L.  A.  Times 44,  151 

Lourdes    258 

Luther 161,  162 

M 

MacGill  42 

Machen    273 

Mallock  77 

Malthus 77 

Manning    118 

Manu  285 

Markham 302 

Marx 71,  173 

Massey 55 

Mazdaznan 250 

McCabe   148 

McDonald   139 

Mellen   185 

Menace    135 

Milton    199 

Morality 308 

More    85 

Morgan 99,  101 

Mormon 239,  240 

Moses   36,  37 


N 

Page 

Nazarite    29 

New  Haven 180,  181 

New  Thought 264 

N.  Y.  Evening  Post 223 

N.  Y.  Sun 193 

N.  Y.  Times 211 

Nichols 270 

Noel    83,  286 

Northcliffe 72 

Numerology 271 


Oahspe 248 

O'Connell    120 

Opium    74 

Outlook    175-198 


Paine 87 

Paley  87 

Pasadena 150,  208,  276 

Patent  Medicine    214 

Patterson    139 

Paul   56,  161,  207 

Peabody 99 

Peters 204 

Phelan 119 

Pillsbury 167 

Pius  IX    116 

Plowman 64 

Pope 67,  121,  143 

Positivists 304 

Post  216 

Potter 98 

Prescott 32 

Preston    127 

Protestant 201 

Prussia 153,  163 


Quakers 177 

Quay    212 

Quigley   129 

E 

Eauschenbusch 163,  283 

Rawson   .  272 


Page 

Eeformation    163,  201 

Eeligion   16,  17 

Eig-Veda 30 

Eobinson 228 

Eockefeller.138,  177,  190,  192,  211 

Eoosevelt     142 

Eussell,  C.  E 95,  181 

Eussell,  G 82 

Eussell,  Pastor 247 

Eyan 105 

S 

Sacred  Heart  113 

Salpetriere    258 

Salvation  Army 298 

Sanday 78 

Segur 117 

Shaf tesbury 74,  82 

Shakers 244,  245 

Shelley   87,  183 

Siam 34 

Sinn  Fein   295" 

Smith,  Gipsy    217 

Smith,  Goldwin   223 

Soap  Box   290 

Socialist  Movement 311 

Spain 131 

Spiritualism    275 

Stalker 78 

Sterling 45 

Sunday  207,  210 

Swinburne 103 

Syracuse   205 


Tablet    157 

Tacitus    170 

Taft    142-144 

Tammany 93,  143 

Thackery 68,  212 

Theosophists    254,  255 

Thirty-nine  Articles   54 

Tingley    256 

Torrey 203 

Tractarian    55 

Trinity 94 

Trinity  Corporation   95 

Trowbridge 29 


Page 

Vedder 76 

Voltaire 53 

W 

Waddell 279 

Wagner   219 

Wall   Street 181 

Wanamaker 203 

Ward   55 

Wattles   268 


Page 

Wesley 170 

Westcott 79 

White,   A.   D 52 

White,   Bouck    192 

Wilberforce    56,  88 

William  63 

Wilson    169,  186 


Yogi 
York 


.255 
.   76 


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